The term 'critical design' is on the upswing in HCI. We analyze how discourses around 'critical design' are diverging in Design and HCI. We argue that this divergence undermines HCI's ability to learn from and appropriate the design approaches signaled by this term. Instead, we articulate two ways to broaden and deepen connections between Design and HCI: (1) develop a broader collective understanding of what these design approaches can be, without forcing them to be about 'criticality' or 'critical design,' narrowly construed; and (2) shape a variation of design criticism to better meet Design practices, terms, and ways of knowing.

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Science studies scholar Bruno Latour suggests that contemporary democracy is shifting from "matters of fact" to "matters of concern": contentious conditions entwined with everyday life. What is the role of human-computer interaction (HCI) design in this shift? In this paper we draw from five design projects to explore how design can express matters of concern by communicating the factors and consequences of issues. In the process, we consider the role of design in contributing to the formation of publics and discuss an emerging orientation to publics in HCI design.

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Social computing-or computing in a social context-has largely concerned itself with understanding social interaction among and between people. This paper asserts that ignoring material components-including computing itself-as social actors is a mistake. Computing has its own agenda and agencies, and including it as a member of the social milieu provides a means of producing design objects that attend to how technology use can extend beyond merely amplifying or augmenting human actions. In this paper, we offer examples of projects that utilize the capacity of object-oriented publics to both analyze the conditions and consequences around existing publics and engage with matters of concern inherent to emerging publics. Considering how computing as an actor contributes to the construction of publics provides insight into the design of computational systems that address issues. We end by introducing the idea of the object ecology as a way to coordinate design approaches to computational publics.