Making

The experience of manual engagement with our world, of making and fixing things, is vital to the idea of human agency and dignity, but is often denied by designed objects that seek to smooth the rough edges for us.

When work is rooted in a reality external to yourself, you are taught a kind of humility in order to reach a level of understanding that then empowers you to act. This can be an unselfish way to see the process of design.

Work is made meaningful through shared standards of good that emerge from the context of a community of use and of practice. Environments that abstract this intrinsic good end up demoralizing the worker.

Conviviality is a term to describe individual freedom through creative intercourse with others and the environment. It is offered as a counter to a philosophy of industrial productivity.

Tools (in the broad sense of purposely shaped systems and objects) are vital to social relationships and the way we understand the world. Design should take measures to protect our access to tools.

When we understand creativity as a process with a focus on the emotions it arouses and the presence of the people involved (rather than as some exclusive talent), we frame even the simplest craft activities of everyday people as empowering, meaningful, and important.

Making things means engaging with the world, which inevitably leads to engagement with other people. In this way, acts of creativity are a key driver for our social connectedness and well-being.

Every act of even simple creativity is inherently political in that it represents worldview that empowers people to make choices and shape the things around them. We should protect this self-expression, especially as we develop the design of online and networked platforms.

The range of capabilities that make up design thinking include human-centeredness, divergent/convergent thinking, experimentation, and storytelling.