Designing in an open-ended world

Designed things are transformative: they get their use within practices, while practices are simultaneously re-made by what we do with designed things. To do justice to the transformative power of design, this paper asks not what design is but what designs do. Starting from an open-ended world, which changes as human practices add to it, we consider Alva Noë’s analysis of artworks in practice, and argue that designs, like art, can show people how practices organise their activity. Things may, however, be designed to organise us differently. Where artworks tend to draw attention to our current practices, we consider several contemporary examples to show how designs may also orient us to future ones. We argue that taking the transformative potential of design seriously calls for ways of designing that direct our attention to the practices that continue to make us.