The usefulness of imperfect design

We documented hundreds of projects many of which might have saved lives. All were produced as quickly as possible with designed outcomes getting more and more rudimentary – imperfection was irrelevant. Use was king. Lifesaving designs, absolutely essential and useful but all imperfect. Perfection would have been deathly!. In our book – A Design History of the COVID-19 Virus – we documented the COVID-19 crisis as it evolved every day from the 1st of January 2020 to 31st May 2020. This temporal span encompassed; the outbreak; the first lockdown and reopening. We looked at all of this care and caring from the point of view of design and, by the sheer volume of design interventions we have documented, illustrate that design really does care