Not only beautiful, but also functional – design, as Bruno Munari argues, is the planning of everything that shapes the environment, the world of life. In this understanding, design is a matter not only of industrial design in the conventional sense but also of services, processes, and experiences. Design is therefore ubiquitous today. No wonder that there is a clear increase in interest in design, as is reflected in numerous scientific publications and in the emergence of new subdisciplines over the last decade, such as, for example, design anthropology.

Design processes cross disciplinary boundaries, and involve a wide variety of actors and their knowledge. The creation of innovative solutions and objects tailored to the contexts in which they are to operate increasingly often requires the launch of appropriate tools enabling in-depth diagnosis, that is, research in support of design processes. Design thus enters into an alliance with the social sciences, anthropology, sociology, and psychology to meet this need. The role of designers is also changing. In the past, designers were architects of selected utility items, and “design” itself was understood quite narrowly as styling and giving an aesthetic form to industrial products. Today, designers work in interdisciplinary teams, and thus design management is becoming ever more important.

We invite representatives of various disciplines to join in constituting the anti-disciplinary field of reflection on design as a socio-cultural phenomenon, as well as on the relations between design and the social sciences, in particular the issue of using knowledge from the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and management in design. We are also interested in the role of design and the designer in contemporary culture. Moreover, we want to recognize new areas of design theory and practice: experimental, speculative, critical, and social design.