Although the term social design is being widely adopted around the world, conceptual clarity is still lacking. The way social design is understood and executed can vary greatly. Without a shared conceptual foundation, knowledge exchange and development are restricted, and so is the professionalisation of practice. This paper brings forward a framework that unites all social design around an overarching objective to foster the common good but argues that design activities to do so may be driven by different values and focus on different outcomes. We identify five components of social design: (1) care-driven design activities for the wellbeing of underprivileged people, (2) responsiveness-driven design activities for good governance, (3) political progress-driven design activities for empowered citizens, (4) social capital-driven design activities for beneficial communities, and, (5) resilience-driven design activities for sustainable future systems. We describe how the framework helps explain, discuss and systematically study social design.

With this volume we present 24 contributions to the philosophy of design. Design is an emerging topic in philosophy and not yet one on which work is shaped by a common set of questions or by an academically entrenched discipline of philosophy of design. We therefore consider it an effort in itself that we can present 24 contributions. Throughout the years we have approached in our careers design from our separate disciplinary perspectives and probed whether design was becoming a more general topic of philosophical reflection. One of us (Pieter) is working in a philosophy department and analyzed design as part of a larger project within the philosophy of technology. This has led to a predecessor volume on the philosophy of design (Vermaas et al. 2008), to analyses of design (Houkes and Vermaas 2010), to joint work with design researchers on the structure of design (e.g., Vermaas and Dorst 2007), and to the creation of the Design Research Foundations book series, in which this volume has appeared. The second of us (Stéphane) has worked first as a ‘philosophy applied to design’ teacher (Vial 2015c) and now is working in a design department and in a design research center. He analyzed design from a phenomenological perspective and contributed to developing the knowledge of design in France. These efforts led to a monograph about how to design affects, structures, and frames experience (Vial 2010) and to the founding of the French-speaking journal Sciences du Design edited by Stéphane (Vial 2017).

This volume presents 25 essays on the philosophy of design. With contributions originating from philosophy and design research, and from product design to architecture, it gives a rich spectrum of state of the art research and brings together studies on philosophical topics in which design plays a key role and design research to which philosophy contributes.

Coverage zooms in on specific and more well-known design disciplines but also includes less-studied disciplines, such as graphic design, interior architecture and exhibition design. In addition, contributors take up traditional philosophical issues, such as epistemology, politics, phenomenology and philosophy of science. Some essays cover philosophical issues that emerge in design, for instance what design can do in addressing societal problems, while other essays analyze main-stream philosophical issues in which design is part of the argument, as for instance abduction and aesthetics.

Readers will discover new research with insightful analyses of design research, design thinking and the specificity of design. Overall, this comprehensive overview of an emerging topic in philosophy will be of great interest to researchers and students.