Different flags over shared terrain: Making sense of ‘design labels’

Design students, professionals, and academics often use design labels, such as social design, co-design, and sustainable design, to position or explain their work. We argue that the labels are insufficient for a clear and nuanced approach to describing design practices, and suggest a way to say a bit more. Seventy design labels were collected and categorized, yielding five clusters. Four clusters derive their name from a necessary element of a design project, namely resources, outcomes, criteria, and methods. The fifth cluster indicates application domains. The discussion explores the clusters and the related elements. We conclude that the labels are often insufficient to clarify a position, that the elements can assist in describing and planning a design practice. But that the labels remain valuable: although these do not describe or explain how these practices are conducted, they do serve to identify specialist communities, and highlight new directions in the field.