This text reflects the growing recognition that the design of the everyday world deserves attention not only as a professional practice but as a subject of social, cultural and philosophic investigation. Victor Margolin, co-founder and an editor of "Design Issues", and Richard Buchanan, also an editor of the same journal, bring together 11 essays by scholars in fields ranging from psychology, sociology and political theory to technology studies, rhetoric and philosophy. The essayists share the editors' concern, first made clear in Margolin's "Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism", with the development of design studies as a field of interdisciplinary research. The contributors (Gianfranco Zaccai, Albert Borgmann, Richard Buchanan, Augusto Morello, Tufan Orel, Nigel Cross, Victor Margolin, Langdon Winner, Carl Mitcham, Tony Fry, and Ezio Manzini) focus on three broad themes that form a sequence of fundamental issues: how to shape design as a subject matter; how to distinguish the activity of designing in the complex world of action; and how to address the basic questions of value and responsibility that persistently arise in the discussion and practice of design.
The essays discuss such topics as the relation of aesthetics to technology, the place of design in social action, the role of the consumer in design decisions, and the need for ethical practice in contemporary design. Manzini's concluding essay shows how the issue of ethics should connect responsible behaviour to decisions made every day in the manufacture of objects.