A dialogue is not just a conversation. It is not about establishing the truth: a temporary, fragile, and often deceptive one. A dialogue is not a matter of winning an argument but of looking at different opinions and making them interact and cross-fertilise. Dialogues have an extraordinary capacity to draw energy from people's differences and channel it towards something new.
This book presents the most updated developments of design research in the form of six dialogues between scholars of the Politecnico di Milano and international scholars. Each dialogue focuses on a specific topic recently addressed on the Politecnico di Milano's PhD programme: the role of users, social innovation, fashion design, colour design, interaction design and urban design.
Accordingly, the book deals with a variety of topical issues for designers, such as recent forms of co-design and co-creation as well as design in relation to the Internet of Things and smart cities. It also addresses more problematic, controversial issues, such as the tyranny of the "thin ideal" in fashion design and the influence of social dynamics in determining the meaning and use of design products.
Many perspectives, then, are brought together to depict the challenges facing design, and especially design research, over the coming years.

Luca Guerrini is associate professor of Interior Design at the Politecnico di Milano's Department of Design. He is a former director of the PhD programme in Design and is in charge of the joint degree programme in Design offered by the Politecnico di Milano and Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has acted as consultant to the National Museum of Architecture in Ferrara. Author of books and essays, his current research interests focus on the notion of design, the relationship between design and the arts, and design research methodologies.

Paolo Volonté is associate professor of Sociology at the Politecnico di Milano's Department of Design. He is a former president and co-founder of STS Italia (the Italian Society for Science and Technology Studies) and co-editor of the International Journal of Fashion Studies. His main research topics are in the fields of fashion studies, design studies, and the sociology of knowledge. He is the author of books and journal articles on the fashion system, the sociology of science, and the theories of German sociologists and philosophers.