What Design Can’t Do

摘要

This is a commentary on Michael Lissack’s two-part article “Understanding is a Design Problem: Cognizing from a Designerly Thinking Perspective.” In the commentary, I investigate Lissack’s thesis that designerly thinking can be used as a pathway to understand the cultural and political world at large. From a design perspective, his thesis is problematic, as design thinking in itself doesn’t have the systematic checks and balances needed for achieving such a critical understanding. One could even argue that design thinking is one of the modes of reasoning that leads to conspiracy theories.