当前，无论是消费品、数字技术还是建成环境的设计，其目的均是为了形成一个同质化的世界。本书作者提出设计理论和实践的新视野，旨在将设计构造世界的能力引导到公平正义与地球环境深度和谐的存在与行为方式之上。作者从本体设计的认识论中发展出自主性设计的方法论，引导设计摒弃商业化和单一现代性取向，采用更具协作性、地方性、多元化的进路来关注环境、实践和政治问题。作者将自主性设计原则与拉丁美洲土著、非洲裔的去殖民主义努力的历史相联系，展示了重新设计后的设计实践如何引导创造更公正和可持续的社会秩序。与着重于说服读者相信设计的思路不同，作者从设计理论、政治生态学、政治本体论和认知科学等领域出发，表明设计可以为解决一些紧迫的全球危机提供强有力的机制。本书既是设计理论著作，也是一位人类学家对过往研究的重新评估，更是极具号召力的设计变革手册，不失为一本设计人类学、设计研究和发展研究的经典之作，为设计理论与实践的发展提供多元的思路与可能性。

Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve.
In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.

The celebrated design professor here tackles the question of how best to communicate real-life experience in a two-degree format, whether on the printed page or the computer screen. The Whole Earth Review called
a "passionate, elegant revelation."