our design glossary.

A

Action
[n] To intervene as a means to achieve an aim or agenda.

Activity
[n] A collective and continual set of actions and effects.

Agency
[n] Action to produce a certain effect esp. involving a single agent with an agenda.

Agenda
[n] An agents proforma of action relating to their preference for the future.

Agent
[n] Something that has potential to act and cause effect esp. a person or artefact.

Approach
[v] To move towards a preferable future-state.
[n] A choice of how to act.

Artefact
[n] A manmade thing, including ephemeral, immaterial or virtual objects.

Artifice
[n] The deceptive feeling that arises from being[v] and being[n] conscious in a network of artefacts.

Assumption
[n] The acceptance of something as a truth without proof, self-reflection or esp. knowledge-of that acceptance.

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B

Benchmark
[v] To check and compare against a standard.
[n] a point of reference for comparison.

Benefit
[v] To receive (and perceive) an advantage or gain.
[n] A subjective advantage or gain.

Blind process
[n] A series of actions towards an end state that is not yet known, but may be revealed at completion.

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C

Co-agency
[n] A synergy of multiple agents and agendas in the form of creative intervention towards a common purpose.
[v] To enact such a process.

Co-creative
[a] Involving collective, common or distributed imagination and original ideas between a group of people.
[n] A creative person or professional that explicitly positions themselves as a creative collaborator.

Co-dependence
[n] being in a common suspension, where everything both relies on and is controlled by everything else esp. in relation to the phenomena of a fundamental circularity and consciousness.

Collaboration
[n] A Choice to engage in collective action with people to produce or create something.

Collaborative practice
[n] A creative practice that explicitly works through and as collective actions.

Common
[a] Shared by and belonging to a group, community, society or culture.

Communication
[n] an exchange or connection between people, places and things esp. a distributed network of information, knowledge or wisedom.

Community of practice
[n] A group of people working and acting together, whether by consensus or profession.

Consensus
[n] A collective or collaborative agreement. An agreement by majority esp. in relation to a group of people.

Convergence
[n] A movement enacting similarities.

Creativity
[n] the ability to use imagination to envision new possibilities.

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D

Deep value
[n] The values or beliefs fundamental to a persons choice in action. An embodied agenda.

Defuturing
[v] Actions of sustaining the unsustainable literally individual actions against a collective future.

Design
[v] To act and intervene in the world with a future purpose in mind esp. with a consideration or reflection on the methods involved in actions and interventions
[n] The artefacts relating to, or produced by and through, design action.

Design action
[n] The way that designers bring-about change in the manmade world.

Design catalyst
[n] A design process that accelerates a change beyond itself or its explicit context, without altering the process itself.

Design methods
[n] An evaluated and exemplified collection of procedures, instructions or processes to bring about specific effects within an applied creative process.

Design studio
[n] A physical and geographical space for community of practice to undertake work esp. in relation to a professional practice or company.

Design process
[n] An informal but repeatable procedure to bring about a specific effect within an applied creative process.

Design research
[v] investigating systematically through actions and their effects. See Phronetic.
[n] systematic investigation and processes of the generation of facts, ideas, theories, knowledge or truths within the relationship of design as discipline and epistemology.

Disharmony
[n] An unpleasant state of disagreement or lack of consensus.

Divergence
[n] A movement enacting differences

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E

Emergence
[n] A revealing of something previously unseen or known.

Enaction
[n] To action an idea, concept, plan or purpose.

Ethical
[a] relating to beliefs in actions.

Ethical expert
[n] Someone who has engaged in a process of reflecting on their actions, found transparency in their assumptions and then re-connected their actions and beliefs to form a type of knowledge-action.

Eudemonia
[n] A choice to act for and with good-spirit, with the presumption that such actions will bring about both a future happiness and will-to-happiness.

Evolution
[n] the ongoing and continued process of flux, diversification and change of both nature and artifice, society and thought.

Expert
[n] Someone or thing that has significant understanding or knowledge of a particular area.

Expertise
[n] A high level of interconnected knowledge and skill in a particular field.

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F

Flux
[n] A state of continual change.

Futuring
[v] Corrective and redirective action towards the Sustainment, specifically aiming towards creating a more eudemonic future. See Defuturing.

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G

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H

Harmony
[n] A state of pleasant and synergised agreement or consensus.

I

Ideation
[n] The process of generating new ideas and concepts.

Ideational-network
[n] A network of agents (people and things) that co-create new ideas and concepts.

Improvisation
[n] A spontaneous reconfiguration of known and unknown elements without conscious preperation.

Innovation
[n] A manifested disruption of an existing trend or pattern of development.

Intervention
[n] An action within a situation to alter or change it.

Intravention
[n] An action inside and with a gestalt to alter or change it’s outside properties.

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J

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K

Knowing
[a] Being aware or having knowledge of something.

Knowledge-action
[n] The embodied knowledge that arises or emerges within an action or set of actions.

L

Languaging
[v] A process of using the alterations of language to affect common values, build consensus, and create new understandings or principles. A change in languaging is a measurable quality and can be used to benchmark paradigm shift.

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M

Manmade world
[n] The world as build by hand, with purpose and intention.

Map
[v] To abstract something within a framework, with a certain purpose or function.
[n] An abstract but functional tool to be used for a purpose esp. an abstraction of something concrete to simplify and aid a users navigation. Maps are similar to models.

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N

Nurture
[v] To attend to and encourage growth.

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O

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P

Paradigm
[n] A pattern or model esp. in relation towards a set of socio-cultural behaviours and perceptions.

Paradigm-shift
[n] A fundamental change in deep value, assumptions and approach at a socio-cultural level.

Perspective
[n] An attitude towards something external.

Phronetic
[n] Relating to the situated knowledge surrounding actions that have real-world effects.

Possibility
[n] Future-state qualities and alternatives. Can be grouped into thinkable and unthinkable categories.

Potential
[a] of having the capacity to become something in the future.
[n] latent properties or seeds that can be refined or developed for the future.

Process
[n] A series of actions with the aim of achieving a specific end. See Blind Process.

Proprioception
[a] Relating to spatial and bodied knowing or knowledge specifically, knowing how to negotiate and orientate a body in a space.

Purpose
[n] The reason for actions.

Purposing
[v] To design purpose instead of artefact.

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Q

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R

Redirective practice
[n] A creative or design practice that both corrects its own defuturing activities, and redirects them towards the futuring agenda.

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S

Seed
[n] A fundamental but latent value within an artefact which may manifest itself at a later date.
[v] To plant or sow values for future effect.

Service
[v] To perform or act for someone.
[n] A system that supplies a person’s desire or need.

Service design
[v] To design services as artefacts for consumption.
[n] The professional discipline of design that deals with service systems and therefore peoples desires and needs.

Skill
[n] An ability to do something well.

Socio-cultural
[a] relating to the interrelations of social and cultural factors.

Socio-economic
[a] relating to the interrelations of social and economic factors.

Socio-environmental
[a] relating to the interrelations of social and environmental factors.

Socio-material
[a] relating to the interrelations of social and material (esp. material culture) factors.

Socio-political
[a] relating to the interrelations of social and political factors.

Sophia
[n] The knowledge concerning generalities and universal truths.

Sustainment (the)
[n] The project of moving towards a collective preferable future where socio-cultural/economic/environmental/material/political factors are in positive balance for worldly well-being

Sympoiesis
[n] A synergetic interaction between two or more components that produces or creates something new.

Synergetic
[a] Referring to the dramatic increase in both possibility and potential when a sympoietic configuration is found or enacted.

Synergy
[n] A collaboration that results in an output or effect greater than the sum of the collaborators individual outputs.

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T

Tacit knowledge
[a][n] An unstated knowledge, esp. a knowledge that is learnt and used in a way that does not involve language.

Team
[n] A group of people working together esp. for a shared interest or goal.

Tool
[v] To equip someone with artefacts useful to actions.
[n] An artefact that assists in or affords an action esp. relating to enacting changes.

Trope
[n] A metaphorical injunction.

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