"These harbingers of an expanded field are indeed exciting. When our department changed its name to Media Design Practices, we shifted our emphasis to emerging practices that are developing in response to increasingly unpredictable conditions. With our focus on ensuring that designers can thrive in non-design domains, we emphasize communication across cultural and disciplinary boundaries. We also foster an ability for designers to be able to articulate their expertise to diverse communities unfamiliar with design, from policy wonks to hotel workers. This requires that designers find better ways to engage directly with people and the world at large. Operating with "critical distance," keeping the world at arms length, is great for critique but not so good for action."

"In Media Design Practices (MDP), we tackle this issue head on with two tracks that intermingle and challenge one another: Lab—which engages with future-oriented speculative work with emerging ideas from science, tech, culture—and Field, which integrates fieldwork in the Global South in addressing emerging ideas from science, tech, culture. artcenter.edu/mdp or watch this short film."