In this paper we shall equally stimulate the integration-discourse and the common understanding of design’s ability in optimizing process as well as its social responsibility.
Man touches on design, design touches on man. Consequently design (products, information, services etc) is in principle being received, grasped, adopted, accepted, refused, misused, interpreted in some way – in spite of being used in a way in which it was attended to be used or not.
Therefore design acts in unavoidable conjunction with social structure, social and individual acting, ergo with human (behaviour). If we characterise culture as a symptom of how people treat each other [1], and if we consider an improvement of interhuman dealings desirable, then it becomes comprehensible, that design might potentially become an active helping part, especially if we attribute (at least) the ability to design (if not even the main task) to be a process-optimising discipline (e.g. in productive, informative, artefact, acoustic, visual, interface-, service- or coordinative matters).
Here becomes apparent a process-referred parallel (to intercultural integration-process): Let us start from the assumption of a heterogenic model of society, which is based on the dialectic principle of innumerable contrasts (e.g. generative, gendered, cultural, religious, economic, ethnic, financial, geographic etc), then integration becomes a comprehensible tool in optimising in deficit societal process (e.g. enviousness, discord, conflict, prejudice etc). Both – design and integration – have in common a certain way of process: e.g. communication, simplification, optimisation, help, linking etc. Both support therefore an improvement of (e.g. individual, artificial, social) deficits. And both can be reciprocal stimulating.
Against this background it becomes reasonable, that in social and design discourse conflict and debate are being constructively and productively evident and useful. Without controversy, without dispute, society in the end would be inconceivable, and design became robbed of one of its basic innovative mechanisms. Both the societal and design improvement need and use the impulse of reflection as well as the interchange of information, knowledge and opinion.