Transversal Design for Social Impact

Lydia Yan’s poster project highlights the e-waste crisis in Guangzhou, China, urging reflection with the question: “What do we feed our children?” Image: Adelaide Zollinger
Lydia Yan’s poster project highlights the e-waste crisis in Guangzhou, China, urging reflection with the question: “What do we feed our children?” Image: Adelaide Zollinger

Looking deep to see wide and far

By Michelle Luo

4.360 “Transversal Design for Social Impact,” (previously 4.s32) offered by MITdesignX and Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT), fosters dialogue and empathy through artistic process. In this interdisciplinary course, student designers learn methods to self-reflect and expand their perspectives for more impactful and imaginative design questions.

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water,” advises Bruce Lee, film and martial arts star. Lee’s famous quote advises martial arts practitioners to be adaptable to circumstances, the environment, and the unexpected. In wider society, when design frameworks are applied rigidly and hastily, unintentional ethical dilemmas may arise down the line. To foresee ethical dilemmas and mitigate harm, designers likewise must be “like water,” says Yvette Man-yi Kong, instructor of 4.360 (previously 4.s32) Transversal Design for Social Impact.

A half-term course,4.360 (previously 4.s32) is a collaboration between the MIT Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) and MITdesignX academic programs, integrating principles of artistic approach with entrepreneurial innovation for thoughtful design. Image courtesy of Gearóid Dolan
To foresee ethical dilemmas and mitigate harm, designers likewise must be “like water,” says Yvette Man-yi Kong, instructor of 4.s32 Transversal Design for Social Impact. Image courtesy of Gearóid Dolan

A half-term course, 4.360 is a collaboration between the MIT Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) and MITdesignX academic programs, integrating principles of artistic approach with entrepreneurial innovation for thoughtful design. Students of transversal design, an emerging art-informed design methodology, cultivate the capacity to “go deep” into one’s own motivations, passions, and social position, which informs their ability as designers to “go wide” in addressing broad, complex social problems. Kong asks:

“If you don’t really have empathy for yourself, how can you have it for someone else?”

Just as water poured into a tea cup “becomes the tea cup” — as Bruce Lee counsels — Kong recommends a designer must “forget the preconception of who you are and what you think.” She adds that transversal design aims to produce “not just ethically-sound, but culturally-resonant interventions.” To do so, designers go wide — fostering empathy, perspective-taking, and dialogue with collaborators to develop more effective questions for more effective answers.

In transversal design, questions informed by a designer’s thoughtful exploration will lead to the creation of ethically sound solutions. The field owes its heritage to “interrogative design,” a critical design methodology conceived by Krzysztof Wodiczko, Professor Emeritus of ACT. Rather than centering solutions, interrogative design centers the design of questions. In doing so, the interrogative process can unearth marginalized perspectives and provoke awareness.

Full article can be found here.

At the end of the course's half-term duration, students submit a final poster project charting their journey into themselves and their communities by posing a relevant and resonant design question. The posters were revealed over the final session. Image: Adelaide Zollinger
Nanvi Jhala created an interactive flipbook to reflect the layered complexity of mental health struggles “revealing hidden curriculum as each page is flipped.” Image: Adelaide Zollinger

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