As design’s role in society has expanded, various "conceptual" design practices have emerged like critical design, speculative design, design fiction, and adversarial design.

With their unique qualities, these forms of discursive design are all tools for thinking. Rather than utility or aesthetics, their ultimate aim is to inspire reflection upon substantive socio-cultural discourses such as climate change, gun control, genetic engineering, immigration, & animal rights.

Despite growing interest over the past two decades, there is scant literature that helps designers actually create discursive things. Discursive Design, however, is structured around nine distinct facets that inform the production and dissemination of more effective and defensible work.

With its practical emphasis, the book offers frameworks, tools, terms, case studies, and hundreds of images of new and historic projects. And while discursive design has largely been used as a form of social engagement (similar to forms of conceptual art), the book imagines and articulates new applications within research and practice.

Written through the lens of product design, Discursive Design also has direct relevance to theorists, practitioners, and other stakeholders within graphic design, interaction design, service design, architecture, strategic foresight, conceptual art, and any creative field where physical artifacts deliberately embody and engender discourse.

Ultimately Discursive Design is a project of expansion—articulating processes and possibilities for greater collaboration, relevance, and service as design becomes involved in more complex, contested, and crucial domains of individual and social life.