Unconscious Design
How We Have Become Collaborative Amnesiacs
I wrote Unconscious Design to share an approach to complexity, collaboration and change.
When I look at the everyday landscape, I notice a cadence of shame built into objects and systems we barely see.
Through familiar artefacts—from speeding tickets and toy soldiers to traffic lights—Unconscious Design traces the stories, systems and assumptions shaping daily life. It explores the unintended consequences of design: the ways objects, services and conventions can determine who feels welcome, who is judged, and who is left out.
Bringing together social theory, service design and lived experience, the book considers design not simply as something deliberately styled or made, but as something that also emerges over time through habits, institutions, rules and relationships. Everyday things can reveal the deeper systems that shape how we live—and the unequal conditions under which we do so.
Unconscious Design is a call to become more attentive: recognising the judgments we may unconsciously reproduce, and to work more honestly alongside the full range of people affected by design.
Design belongs to everyone. Through meaningful collaboration, we can make choices that support real civic change—and help create a world that works more fairly for all.
