What is the value add of explicit design

I have found it interesting today that design seems to be a ubiquitous part of people's lives. I use the word ubiquitous because I believe people take it for granted, or in other words, they have automatized the design processes in their lives. They have developed habits, models, algorithms, etc. all to reduce the decision-making that needs to take place each day. The only time they think about their designing is when their automation breaks down. This idea relates to cognitive dissonance in suggesting natural causes of cognitive dissonance. It's not necessarily just previously unencountered ideas that can create cognitive dissonance, but previously unencountered experiences and situations. Schon talks about this phenomenon in "The Reflective Practitioner" and about how when people are confronted with ideas, experiences, or situations they are not familiar with, they first try to frame or set the problem in terms of what they already know. If that is impossible, then Schon puts forth that individuals engage in dialogue with themselves, the situation, or other individuals to try to understand more about the problem so as to frame it in terms of something previously encountered. The goal is always to get to a well-framed problem, because then the individual can ritualistically apply the previous methods, models, algorithms, etc. to resolve the problem. I have not seen Schon make the explicit statement that this is what people do in the everyday course of their lives, but that is what I believe. Schon illustrates a process that everyone engages in, but they do not necessarily understand what or why they do what they do. Hence Schon's phrase "you know more than you can say". For Schon, everyone is constantly designing and redesigning their life, their paradigms, their environments, etc. through purposeful action.

In working on our design-based research project, it is clear to me that the value-add of the class project is not necessarily the presentation of a finished proposal/project, but the making explicit of certain 'design' decisions and 'designerly thinking' of individuals involved in the project.

This is the value of explicit design: when we know why we are doing something, we can control it, manipulate it, alter it, conform it, etc to produce some 'more desirable future' to quote Klaus Krippendorf ("The Semantic Turn"). That is what we as agentive human beings are doing constantly through design: shaping a 'more-desirable' future based on our personal values. We just don't realize it as design because it has become ubiquitous and as a result has become mysterious.

Change your values, change your design. Change your design, change your life. Change your life, change the world.