Designing Our Way to a Better World

by Thomas Fisher

Envisioning what we need, when it doesn’t yet exist: this, Thomas Fisher tells us, is what design does. And if what we need now is a better world—functioning schools, working infrastructure, thriving cities—why not design one? Fisher shows how the principles of design apply to services and systems that seem to evolve naturally, systems whose failures sometimes seem as arbitrary and inevitable as the weather. But the “invisible” systems we depend on for our daily lives (in education, politics, economics, and public health) are designed every bit as much as the products we buy and the environments we inhabit—and are just as susceptible to creative reimagining. Designing Our Way to a Better World challenges the assumptions that have led to so much poor performance in the public and private realms: that our schools cannot teach creativity, that our governments cannot predict the disasters that befall us, that our health system will protect us from pandemics, that our politics will remain polarized, that our economy cannot avoid inequality, and that our industry cannot help but pollute the environment. Targeting these assumptions, Fisher's approach reveals the power of design to synthesize our knowledge about the world into greater wholes. In doing so, this book opens up possible futures—and better futures—than the unsustainable and inequitable one we now face.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2016

About the author

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Reviews

[Ann Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thought-provoking book that makes the case for applying principles of design thinking to the massive problems facing humanity today. The book is at its strongest when it is tackling big-picture issues, like the unintentional consequences of short-term thinking by policymakers. Fisher's arguments are less compelling when he proposes some rather extreme design "solutions" (removing children from troubled homes and placing them in publicly-funded boarding schools; making a conscious decision to kill off rural communities that have an inadequate tax base, simply be deciding to no longer fund public infrastructure like roads in those communities) without adequately delving into the moral, practical, and relational consequences of going this route.

[Elise Schebler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thought provoking look at how design methods can be used to create a sustainable future in education, politics, economics and many other areas. Immensely readable and hopeful.

[LNH · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt like this book went off the rails a bit in the last couple of “wicked problem” sections but on the whole I found a lot of the material to be very stimulating and integrative.

[Mark Congiusta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only design can save us now.

[Renee]

Expansion of design beyond the built environment into natural environment, public health, the economy, education, political systems, disaster abatement, problem solving.