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Interconnections in Design 

Activity: The Layers of Design

Learning Goal: To help learners of any age see the web of connections embedded in our lives.

Everything is designed, from the chair you’re sitting on to the app you use for exercise class to the policy for taking time off from your workplace. Not everything was designed well or even intentionally, but somewhere, someone(s) made a decision about everything people have put into the world. Their reasons for doing so—the gaps they aimed to fill—varied, but each item ends up as part of an interconnected system. 

We’re now in an era where the things we make are altering our relationships with everything—each other, the natural world, and even ourselves—at an alarming rate. A strange time like this calls for some strange ways of thinking so you can reveal issues and opportunities before they come. Understanding the layers of design helps us to understand the how and why behind a product or thing; once we see the layers we can start to selectively unsee to reveal new ideas.

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