Required reading in undergraduate design for social good. List curated from my class readings. Topics in design, philosophy, fashion, games, and more!
created by mayina
last updated July, 2026
In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis
Peter Marcuse
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century
Alice Wong
Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
Kat Holmes
The Design of Everyday Things
Donald A. Norman
The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
Jon Meacham
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Sherry Turkle
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
Cathy O'Neil
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Richard H. Thaler
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jane Jacobs
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
Barry Schwartz
More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave
Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
William McDonough
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Michel Foucault
Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists
Agnès Rocamora
Captains Of Consciousness Advertising And The Social Roots Of The Consumer Culture
Stuart Ewen
The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Volume 0)
Mihály CsĂkszentmihályi
The Industrial Design Reader
Carma Gorman
The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects
Deyan Sudjic
Gamer Theory
McKenzie Wark
Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code
Ruha Benjamin
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