In our first State of Design Report we asked our researchers whether, as the UK Design Council asserts, design always has an answer? In this second report we ask again whether design has any answers, or are there just questions?

In Cedric Price’s lecture and slide show – “Technology is the answer but what was the question?” – technology is undoubtedly an answer but what the question might have been is a riddle . When, in the final paragraph, he says “The usefulness of this architecture is to remind its users that the major resource that should be conserved is the human spirit.” it is possible that if technology is the answer then the question might have been how to conserve the human spirit? Sixty years on…what might that mean?

Design education is premised on the promise of making things better mostly on the slippery project of the better world. While the question about the better world remains ‘what kind of word do I want to live in?’ the answer remains elusive. Even Herbert Simon’s acclaimed ‘preferred state’ is just another way to imagine a better world. But continuing to believe in foretelling possible future scenarios and preferred states that seem to be less and less attainable might illustrate the uselessness of knowing the answers to the wrong questions.