One simple thing that we might do in the research process is a simple renaming of the user as a reader or interpreter, which emphasizes the interpretive nature of design interactions.

Designers are future-makers. But designers also need to continually acknowledge their role as one piece in a very large puzzle that makes the world a different place tomorrow than it was today. While the idealism and utopianism that often characterize design solutions are valuable in the sense that they allow us all to see what might be in a perfect work, it might be more beneficial to start to consider design as moving from “the solution” to “a solution".

Once designers start to look for patterns, they start noticing them everywhere. So, the goal of teaching students how to engage is design research is as much about verifying the validity of those patterns as it is about identifying them in the first place.

Designers need to understand various perspectives that exist in the world—and to be able to speak many different “languages” in order to translate these ideas in meaningful ways.

The paradox of impact is that while design shapes the world in profound ways, it is also being shaped by the world. Design as a process necessarily interfaces with many other systems to shape and redefine the world and our human experience within it. Designers and design in general is, however, uniquely situated to be critical mediators between the various entities, forces, and agendas that are constantly at work in developing the future that we collectively and individually want.