Topic Exploration

New Kind of Design

The seven NKD principles and the practices that follow from them — as a full course.

42 Lessons / Coming soon

Coming Soonin development

This course is in development. Leave your email and we’ll tell you when it opens.

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Overview

New Kind of Design is our account of what design and business practice have to become if they are to be adequate to the world as it actually is: complex, connected, and computationally irreducible.

The seven NKD principles describe attributes of that world — that considering anything less than everything leaves something out, that nothing is ever isolated, that good and bad are entangled in the same outcome, that we never know exactly what we have done, that our knowledge is bounded, that tomorrow stays unknown until it arrives, and that a theory of everything applied to everything is our only real hope. The seventeen NKD practices are what follows from taking those principles seriously.

The course covers the current state of design and business, the principles themselves, the practices, case studies, and the future state we think is available. It is in development now.

You can read the seven principles in full today, and the NKD in Practice essay series walks through what each one changes in real work.

Details

42 Lessons / Coming soon

AnytimeVirtual

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You will learn

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The current state: complexity, computational irreducibility, externalities, and what current practice is missing

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The seven NKD principles, and what each one changes in real design and business decisions

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The seventeen NKD practices, from Consider Everything to Seek Perfection

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How NKD has been applied in real organisational contexts

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The future state: what design looks like when this is normal

This course is for

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Designers and strategists who have read the NKD principles and want to work from them

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Leaders making decisions whose consequences they cannot fully model

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Anyone who finds current design and business practice inadequate to the moment

Your Teacher

J. Paul Neeley - Speculative Designer & Researcher

J. Paul studied Speculative Design with Dunne & Raby on the Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art, and has spent the years since applying these methods with organisations from start-ups to multinationals to the United Nations. He founded the School of Critical Design with Gemma Jones in 2017.

For Companies

‍For team licences, multiple seats, or to discuss a bespoke workshop for your organisation, email hello@critical.design.

Want to see how we run this work end to end? Read The Speculative Design Methodology: A Practitioner’s Workflow.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the New Kind of Design course launch?

The course is in development. Register your interest and we will email you when enrolment opens — you will hear before it is announced anywhere else.

Can I read about NKD in the meantime?

Yes. The seven principles are published in full at /new-kind-of-design, and the NKD in Practice essay series walks through what each principle changes in real work.