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This work examines how design can respond to and critically engage with the concept of missing data.

February 12, 2026Open Access

Design and Missing Data

PPPaola PierriUniversity of Bern SCSimona ColittiUniversity of Bologna

Key Points

This work examines how design can respond to and critically engage with the concept of missing data.
Explores the sociohistorical and institutional factors contributing to missing data.
Highlights alternative data infrastructures and participatory inquiry methods.
Discusses experimental visualizations, collections, and archiving techniques for data.
Identifies the political implications of missing data for cultural representation.
Proposes participatory and critical design approaches to tackle existing data paradigms.
Suggests new ways of reimagining design's relationship with digital data systems.

Abstract

This curatorial introduction explores the politics of absence in digital knowledge systems, focusing on how design can critically engage with and respond to the condition of ‘missing data’. Absence is understood not as a technical gap but as the product of sociohistorical and institutional forces, with profound implications for epistemic justice and cultural representation. This issue foregrounds practices that question dominant data paradigms and reflect specifically on the role of design in engaging with data as a contested domain thatdemands participatory and critical approaches. From alternative data infrastructures to participatory inquiry and experimental ways of visualizing, collecting, and archiving, this editorial for the current Open Debate section is interested in how design can become more attentive to its relationship with data, to the politics of datafication, and to the need to reimagine other ways of engaging with data through design.

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