Politics & Governance / Domestic Politics / Democracy & Elections

Design Isn't About Solutions: It's a Tool for Democracy (And It's Messy)

Design as Democratic Inquiry: Putting Experimental Civics into Practice

Carl DiSalvo

Most people think design is about making things look good or solving problems efficiently. But what if design is actually a messy, slow, and deeply political tool for democracy? Based on Carl DiSalvo's groundbreaking book 'Design as Democratic Inquiry: Putting Experimental Civics into Practice,' this video explores how design experiments can reshape public life—not by selling products, but by building spaces for conflict, care, and collective action. DiSalvo, a professor at Georgia Tech, draws from years of community work in Atlanta to show how simple tools like fruit-picking maps, sensor-laden trees, and fictional smart city stories can ignite 'productive friction' and challenge power structures. You'll learn why democracy isn't just about voting, but about tiny, everyday acts of making and questioning. This isn't a tech tutorial—it's a radical rethink of what design can do for society. Watch to discover how embracing failure and messiness might just save our civic spaces.