PRACTICING DESIGN: SEARCH INTO UNCERTAINTY AND NEGOTIATE WITH THE UNKNOWN

Practising Design: to search into uncertainty, shift and negotiate with the unknown

by Burton Nitta (Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta)

The theoretical physicist Richard Feynman left a parting statement on his blackboard before his death in 1988: “What I cannot create, I do not understand” (Way, 2017). As we struggle with transitions and challenges to old world orders (Solnit, 2026) that we experience in current times, as academic Adam Tooze calls a Polycrisis (Allouche et al. 2023), in Design for Discourse we search through design practice to ‘what could be’. By researching in practice, we can critically engage in the process of imagining altered realities. Feynman inspires us to think in different ways, to create from the ground-up and, what we suggest, to ground ideas through research in practising; we practise and make practice; in the process embracing the unknown and uncertain. 

The studio is not immune to the prevalence of the Polycrisis. Geopolitical turbulence, planetary crisis, and AI disruptions are to name a few. Central to reactions is the question of what role design research practice takes, is situated and embodied practising to create ‘what could be’. 

We face a changing landscape in the creative world. UNESCO reports creators face projected revenue losses of up to 24% by 2028 because of shifting trade and AI, as well as direct public funding for culture remaining extremely low - under 0.6% of GDP and continuing to decline (UNESCO, 2026). At the same time, the UK higher education sector faces significant deficits and funding cuts (House of Commons Library, 2025). In such a moment of turmoil, we question: as our environments and tools transform rapidly, is this the time for creatives to transform, to ensure the quality of innovation in creativity?

And when we reflect on one of the current major disruptors to design practice, AI, we are reminded of philosopher and computer scientist, Jaron Lanier’s warning that like the game of chess, computers also originated as tools of war - chess as a battle simulation and computers to crack secret codes and guide missiles (Lanier, 2011). Critical reflection on these conflict origin stories, through discourse practice, we can imagine what Ursula Le Guin seeks for as the ‘nature, subject, words of the other story’ to shape alternatives (Le Guin, 2019). In discourse creation, we can share ideas, test commonly held beliefs, and offer invitations to imagine together - mechanisms that systems thinkers Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn define as important in creating paradigm shifts (Ichioka, Pawlyn, 2021). 

Rebecca Solnit (2026) further inspires the potential framing of what relationship practice has in current contexts and situations. In creating alternative ideas through practice, we can consider what she motions as ‘ideas as seeds’, or ideas as ‘imaginal cells’ such as the cells responsible for reconstructing the insect's body during metamorphosis. We too have used the idea of seeds as prototypes in workshops to ‘bring to life’ (Burton Nitta 2024-). With this inspiration, we flesh-out evolutions to design practice in frames of ‘bringing into realities’. Nature-led responses and the ‘more-than-human’ world offer routes to reimagine what these can be. For example, the current MAID Discourse Unit design brief for 2026 explores the concept of regenerative futures and regenerative design methods.

Underpinning reorientations and navigations, we come back to the discourse design practice that negotiates with uncertainty and possibility. Design methods informing reactions include critical, speculative, regenerative, among other design methods and wider disciplines in pluriversal approaches (Escobar, 2018). We use British English to differentiate between practice as a noun defined by ‘c’, and importantly, we practise through design as a verb marked out with the ’s’. 

Reflecting on Feynman’s quote, we see possibilities to reframe research through design practising; to create to understand. However, we might update our parting statement to read: ‘we create to search towards negotiating uncertainty and the possibilities of the unknown’. In terraforming imaginaries and practising in design, like the role of imaginal cells involved in metamorphosis, we are transformed. We shift, situate, and connect to possibilities through the process of practising and how the practice, is itself practising for something. 

Applying Frayling’s (1993) framework of Research through Design, the practice of Burton Nitta values the creative process as discovery. We search and find the “unknown” through active creation - moving our hands and doing things.