Designed Conflict Territories

Critical design, a conceptual offshoot of industrial and product design, has been encouraging debate through provocative design work for the last ten years. It may now be time to use the established principles of the critical approach to design to actually create change by using it in tandem with technology to create new digital territories for political commons. These Designed Conflict Territories would take on the role of the commons lost to proprietary and securitised technology which was originally promised as political liberation as well as the gradual collapse of the effectiveness of protest.

But there are also problems with this proposal, at a point in time where critics begin to doubt the veracity of critical design and designers as a whole, are fearful of appearing subjective to a political viewpoint. Should designers as masters of contemporary communication radicalise themselves to encourage or enact change?

This article for Open Democracy approaches with a historical take on critical design practice and speculates on a version of it outside of the gallery setting and how it might be applied and live in the world.

It is part of a body of work and writing culminating in a series of articles examining the role of design in providing platforms and sites for political discourse, particularly in regard to digital technology.