Design & Postcapitalist Desire

Over the past decade, political polls have consistently shown that most young people in the United States no longer support capitalism. However, there is no widely accepted vision for an alternative system. Economic and social theories on degrowth suggest the potential for a radical restructuring of economic and social institutions. Yet, advocates typically take aim at the policy or institutional level and overlook the social practices of everyday life. Thus, postcapitalism is hard to picture.

This dissertation examines how professional practices, particularly UX and service design in the United States, might help envision and materialize “postcapitalist livelihoods.” The primary question guiding this project is: How might professional design practices be come catalysts in the transition to a postcapitalist society?

The inquiry is structured around five projects integrating themes from economic, cultural, technological, and philosophical scholarship with design theory and practice. These projects operationalize theories on community economics, commons-based peer production, needs satisfaction, and cosmopolitan localism by developing new tools, meth ods, and approaches to design that are studied through research projects and practical inquiries. Thirteen empirical studies provide evidence and insights to support three path ways for professional designers to support transitions to postcapitalist livelihoods, with a focus on UX and service design: (1) Design Supporting Community Economies, (2) Design Supporting Commons-Based Peer Production, and (3) Design Supporting Networked and Localized Needs Satisfaction.

New ways of designing are assessed through the dynamics of social practices, resulting in a unified framework for “designing for social practices toward postcapitalist livelihoods.” Combined theoretical and empirical studies result in a complementary theoretical frame work, the Desire-Needs-Practices Framework. This framework blends a Spinozist view of desire, Max-Neef’s theory of needs, and the dynamics of social practices (Shove et al.).

Empirical studies include developing and testing new tools for designers in for-profit and governmental contexts, creating new analytic and generative methods for design practitioners and researchers, experimenting with needs-focused methods and cosmopolitan localism frameworks in design education, and studying best practices for design to support commons-based peer production. The cultural vision of solarpunk further inspired the third pathway, culminating in public workshops that introduced a new institutional approach to design practice and education called the “Solar Punk Design Academy.”

The dissertation concludes with an ecology of intervention proposals, derived from the research and organized by the three pathways for design transitions.