right answer. Instead of arguing to stop the road, a designer is more likely to explore the question to which “a road” has been offered as the right answer. Where are people going? How else can we move the people who would otherwise use this proposed road? Could we put the road underground? What about a multimodal boulevard that accommodates bicycles and pedestrians as promi- nently as cars? Could the road be designed to “biodegrade” into a public greenway after 15 years, when it will no longer be needed? You get the idea. This diagnosing of the problem is as important as promoting solutions in which we are confident. Both of these steps contribute towards building power for making change. HARNESSING THE POWER TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE In focusing on generating alternatives, do designers over-focus on what should be, without putting enough effort into building power to bring about change? Many activists do [6], and designers are no different. This section offers a brief view of the power of design activism. (Note that power is a huge topic and this is a highly dis- tilled presentation of this author’s view). Power is meaningful in terms of being able to make choices and influence decisions that affect us. There are several common means of power, including organized money, organized people, or, for our purposes, organized materials, representations and spaces [6]. There are also some common forms of power that, for simplicity’s sake, we can identify as the stick (force), the carrot (bargaining or exchange) and the hug (persuasion) [4]. For exam- ple, organized people can form an army to force their decisions on others, form a research group to produce evidence that helps them bargain for change, or form a social group with a charismatic leader who inspires people to believe in a cause. In terms of architecture and the built environment, architect Kim Dovey highlights sticks, carrots and hugs in material terms. For example, prisons and fortresses “strip the subject of any choice of non-compliance” such that they align with destructive force [5]. In terms of exchange or bargaining power, most spaces con- stitute a sort of spatial offer concerning how a space may be seen, used or accessed. A public plaza makes a different spatial offer than an office building or a private residence, yet these offers serve as constant points of bargaining or negotiation. In terms of persua- sion, spaces often work to seduce or authorize; they might uphold conventions, as where formal or classic architectural forms rein- force a sense of authority. Working more in the area of product design, Dan Lockton and Tracy Bahmra, and their respective teams, uncover these same forms of power in terms of material objects [9, 3]. For example, material objects may require compliance through forcing functions that require a condition to be met (such as the electricity being switched off) before a function is enabled (the opening of the maintenance panel). Rationing on the part of material objects is an example of exchange power. Rationing may occur in terms of portions, where only a certain amount of time, material, or energy is enabled; washing powder tablets create an ideal portion. The idea of rationing is tied to product or structural affor- dances—the functions or actions that the user perceives. For example, a dial with 10 temperature settings has a different affor- dance than an on/off button. In terms of persuasion, material objects use seduction and authority, as mentioned earlier, but also often include guidance. For example, a kettle marked with cup measurements informs users how much water to use. A key question for design activists who want to build power to bring about change is, “what capacity do I have to build power, systems Design activists practice a different form of activism ... Rather than being resistant, design activism is mostly “generative.” whether it’s in the form of the stick, the carrot or the hug?” Since in our case activists are concerned with causes that are typically poorly funded, the endgame is building power on a budget. The good news is that designers have good capacity to build power. A key tool for bargaining is disruption, and not simply in the form of negative disruptions such as the blockades men- tioned earlier. In negative disruptions, activists typically create undesirable obstructions, and then agree to remove obstructions in exchange for getting changes they want [11]. Using positive disruptions, activists create alternative offers that are more appealing than the status quo. This is generative activism. Both negative and positive disruptions represent exchange power through deal making. As tools for communication, disruptions are also persuasive. Given how design projects unfold over time, it is useful to con- sider how disruptions are located in different places through the design life cycle—from commissioning, design, fabrication, use, to end-of-life. Some disruptions live only in one or two phases, and are not carried through the whole life cycle. For example, a dress that results from fashion hacking disrupts the fabrication process, but when worn may not look different from other dresses. In the case of an affordable housing ideas competition, which may be conceptually disruptive, nothing is ever fabricated or used. An important element of disruption is the way it frames, or focuses attention, on one area instead of another. Thinking back to the road-building example, while a frame of “stop the road” focuses our attention on the bad attributes of the road, a frame of “biodegradable road” shifts our attention to purposes the road serves now and in the future. It also gives us something completely different to bargain for. Framing is the way that a structure, object or material/spatial process works to focus attention on one area instead of another. Here are some examples of design activist framings for typi- cal causes. In of the field of education, Bruce Mau and colleagues launched an initiative called “the third teacher” premised on the idea that kids learn from relationships with parents first, teachers second, and their physical environment (particularly in the classroom) third. A number of other initiatives, such as the Open Architecture Network’s classroom of the future competi- tion, have also brought a design activist framing to education. Recently, there have been initiatives to anchor public places with a theme of literacy in projects such as the pop-up reading room by The UNI Project, designed by Howeler + Yoon Architecture. Similarly, John Locke of The Living installed bookshelves and books in phone booths around New York City. He framed these phone booths (over 13,000 citywide) as an opportunity for something new, given the presence of cell phones (17 million in the city).