My next book, Philosophy of Design of Philosophy, is still forming in my head. I know what I want to convey, but the conceptual ingredients are evolving. Some new ingredients I’m entertaining are liminality, conceptual integrity and multistability. These new concepts will help me simplify my system and link my thinking to other bodies of work. But incorporating them requires some demolition and reconstruction work. I am also struggling with some perplexities regarding the precise relationship between engineering and design, a heavily contested, linguistically and conceptually confused strip of turf — a true liminal zone. Consequently, I am finding it hard to write short pieces, and I am abandoning most posts I start, because they immediately diverge and get out of control.

What I plan to write about is already a reality for me, and has been for some time: the subject of the book is my praxis, which I use not only in my professional design work, but also in my private practical and theoretical life. My friend Tim joked that I am a design-centered human, and that is entirely accurate. I have come to see everything in terms of design, including philosophy.

Yesterday I interviewed design research legend Liz Sanders on her useful-usable-desirable framework. I am planning to extract the content of the interview into a second letterpressed chapbook, honoring the core concept of human-centered design. Pending Liz’s approval, I plan to call it just Useful / Usable / Desirable.

This framework is profoundly important to me. It was through this framework that design took over my entire life.

At some point, which I can no longer remember, I caught myself thinking about philosophy in a new way, which I never consciously chose.

I was reading, and I suddenly realized I was evaluating what I was understanding in terms of its usefulness, usability and desirability. And I realized I had detected an unconscious habit I’d acquired long ago.

I want to clarify something. I was not evaluating the form, expression or presentation of the ideas (though these are also subject to the same criteria) — I was evaluating the effect of understanding the philosophy. And when it comes to philosophy, understanding does not primarily mean being able to explain the concepts. In philosophy, understanding means being able to enter the conceptual system and to understand from it. Philosophical understanding is an act of intellectual empathy.

I found myself asking: When I enter this philosophy and understand from it — when I view a philosophical worldview instrumentally and assess it as something that can be adopted, lived from and used I ask: Is it useful? Do I become better equipped to make sense of what is happening around me so I can respond more effectively? Is it usable? Does it make it easier to get clear on what is most relevant, and does this sense of relevance help me avoid becoming confused or overwhelmed or cause me to make mistakes? Is it desirable? What does it do to my overall sense of meaning? Does life seem valuable and worth the effort? Or does it make life seem ominous and dark, or worse, empty, pointless and not worth working to improve?

So, Liz’s framework is very likely to be the backbone of my next book. The useful/usable/desirable framework will not only provide a framework for evaluating and generating philosophical worldviews, but will also serve as an exemplar of a successfully designed philosophical worldview.