Displacement of Relationship and Boundary: Thoughts on Design Research for Future Society

Abstract

Based on Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift theory, this paper aims to think about how design research can show its value in the topics facing the future society, ask about the scientificity of design research, and put forward the topic of “design research facing the future society”. The speculative attribute of design thinking determines that designers can make up future scenes through imagination and graphical language. On the premise of the superposition of “complexity problem” and futurology, this paper takes social network theory as the perspective and speculative design as the method, turns the topic to “speculative research facing the weak relationship of future social network”, and deduces the hypothesis that design research will change from “people centered” to “relationship centered”. In the evaluation part, this paper advocates asking questions rather than answering questions. Based on the emphasis on uncertainty, the evaluation criteria evolve from “possible certainty” to “possible uncertainty”. At the same time, the scope of the subject continues to expand, and multi subjects give full play to the self-organization advantages of the subject through cooperation, so as to realize order in disorder.