IF ONLY: DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY

Interaction Design Theorie Seminar 4th Semester at the Zurich University of the Arts

The seminar proposes a critical examination of political components of design as it articulates technology and society. Design is often understood on the surface as an activity producing more or less useful or ornamental things - outside the scope of its entanglements with questions of policy, trade, labor, gender, resources, power structures. Yet, designers can hold an agenda in these matters and designed artefacts and systems can affect how people live, communicate and act. This seminar thus proposes to uncover the material dimension of politics. Through case studies, observations of situations, film excerpts, exercises, guest lectures and essays, we will look at those entanglements as well as address systems that may not seem 'designed' as such but that present components of being planned and organised for a particular purpose.