In Defense of Disciplinary Discomfort: An Introduction to Design Studies Beyond Design

Abstract

This introductory article for the special issue The Design Turn: Design Studies Beyond Design challenges design studies to develop frameworks that explain design's contemporary ubiquity across diverse fields. As design practices expand, design studies must move beyond traditional boundaries to better understand how design's growth relates to broader social, political, and epistemic transformations. This special issue marks a first step toward a design studies beyond design by integrating insights from various disciplines, exploring both the possibilities and tensions inherent in cross-disciplinary inquiry. To guide this effort, we propose the “design turn” as a provocative concept that goes beyond the many recent “turns” in humanities and social sciences. Never simply a discernible reality, we offer the design turn as a lens through which theories, ideas, and empirical frames of design studies may gain new potency at a time when design sometimes loses its cohesion after decades of terminological inflation. Rather than signaling a new era, the design turn emphasizes the need for continuous observation, explanation, and empirical study of design's contemporary patterning. We highlight four key themes of the different contributions to this issue that may help us discern the emergence of a new discourse: pluralization of knowledge, futurity, institutions and procedures, and research ethics. We conclude by cautioning against the lingering possibility of fragmentation inherent in interdisciplinary work where design is little more than trendy jargon. Only through care and a willingness to embrace disciplinary discomfort can design studies beyond design be established in a meaningful sense.