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Design Things offers an innovative view of design thinking and design practice, envisioning ways to combine creative design with a participatory approach encompassing aesthetic and democratic practices and values. The authors of Design Things look at design practice as a mode of inquiry that involves people, space, artifacts, materials, and aesthetic experience, following the process of transformation from a design concept to a thing. Design Things, which grew out of the Atelier (Architecture and Technology for Inspirational Living) research project, goes beyond the making of a single object to view design projects as sociomaterial assemblies of humans and artifacts--\"design things.\" The book offers both theoretical and practical perspectives, providing empirical support for the authors' conceptual framework with field projects, case studies, and examples from professional practice. The authors examine the dynamics of the design process; the multiple transformations of the object of design; metamorphing, performing, and taking place as design strategies; the concept of the design space as \"emerging landscapes\"; the relation between design and use; and the design of controversial things.

We opened this book by quoting Nussbaum’s call for a reorientation of designers and design. Nussbaum sees a demand for design thinking applied to a broad array of societal challenges and a responsibility for designers to take up these challenges in a more open and egalitarian exchange with other societal stakeholders. Designers are necessary according to Nussbaum to ensure quality in our environment, but designers also have to let go of any elitist attitude that would make them hostile to the inclusion of other voices in the design process. But it is not just the old-style designer who is being

The etymology of the English word “thing” reveals a journey from meaning anassembly, which was decided on beforehand to take place at a certain time and at a certain place to deal with certain “matters of concern” to the community, to meaning anobject, “an entity of matter.” So, the termthinggoes back originally to the governing assemblies in ancient Nordic and Germanic societies. These pre-Christian things were assemblies, rituals, and places where disputes were solved and political decisions made. It is a prerequisite for understanding this journey that if we live in total agreement, we do not