Modernità e declino: il design senza committenza / Modernity and decline: design without customer

The economic crisis that has struck Western countries in the past few years has caused a considerable weakening of the entrepreneurial power of businesses: this aspect may be considered a characteristic of Modernity that designers are called to deal with. The crisis has led to a decline of the traditional role of customer in the design sector. The latter has responded to the new situation by creating new work and design methods, such as Exploring Design and Advanced Design (ADD). With the Exploring Design method, developed and tested within an undergraduate degree course, the absence of a customer allows the (young) designers to explore much broader research fields, and to identify new markets and areas of implementation for which design may be a sparkplug of innovation, technology, and future meaning. This article presents the development results achieved by the Exploring Design laboratory work in the past 6 years, and uses them to describe the most recent trends, taking into account the various fields of implementation (communication, food, interior design, etc.), as well as target markets and potential new commissioned work, thus formulating an interpretation of new Modernity that in turn generates questions and perspectives on the transformation of design.