From Process to Outcome

From Process to Outcome — a joint book launch

Date: November 20, 5:30–7pm

Location: MIT Building 9-255, City Arena

About the Event:

As the pace of global change accelerates — ecologically, socially, and technologically — design is emerging as an essential partner to science and technology. This event marks the launch of two new books that capture design’s role across scales.

The Books

Designing the X: Shaping an Unknown Future, by Dennis Frenchman, Svafa Grönfeldt, and Sigurdur Thorsteinsson, examines how design enables us to move with complexity, not against it, shaping futures beyond the limits of the present. Grounded in praxis and research — including interviews with designers, technologists, and educators — it makes the case for design as an essential partner to science and technology: integrative, inventive, and profoundly human.

Value of Design, by Dr. Andrea Chegut, Minkoo Kang, Helena Rong, and Juncheng “Tony” Yang, asks a different question: can design be quantified? Drawing on years of research at MIT’s Real Estate Innovation Lab, the book reveals how design leaves measurable traces in the built environment — economic, social, and environmental — that can be captured through data and correlated with real outcomes in our cities.

Together, the books highlight two stages of design: the process of generating new possibilities, and the outcomes that design makes visible and measurable. The evening will include conversations with contributors, hands-on activities, and book sales.