Design in Systems
An Emergent Paradigm Shift in Research & Practice
1,600+ papers synthesized into an 80-page publication for the Taiwan Design Research Institute. Don Norman calls it “a valuable contribution for all designers.”
I was a consultant for the Research & Development team at the Taiwan Design Research Institute (TDRI) in the summer of 2025. TDRI had recently collected 1,600+ conference papers, 890+ design school courses, and 240+ journal articles, and were analyzing emergent themes in design research and practice.
The plan was to synthesize the findings in a word processor, report-style. If you read my bio, you know how I feel about word processors. This was really interesting stuff: hauntology, de-centering humans in design, a reimagined internet. I proposed instead that I bring these concepts to life through original graphics and thought-provoking images.
It’s a fine line writing a publication both academics and designers would want to read. I spent the summer poring over a six-chapter narrative structure for the themes we identified. The voice needed to be polished yet playful, drawing readers in. Once I was happy with the voice, it was time to turn to layout and visualizations. I sketched, Figma-ed, sketched again, InDesign-ed, then sketched again…you get the idea.
By the end of the summer, we had the entire 80-page publication. We sent it to an agency for final edits and printing, and then it was launched at the IASDR 2025 annual conference in Taipei. On his flight home to California, Don Norman reread the book and wrote to us: “This is a valuable contribution for all designers. It would make for an excellent text in schools.”
This publication was a testing ground for everything I’d learned in my first year at Stanford: systems thinking, graphic design, and how to turn theory into something usable. The content feels like a manifesto because I believe what it says.