For over a decade, IASDR Workshops have provided an excellent opportunity for designers of all genres to build connections and crossovers between disciplines, communities, education, research, and practice. The following workshops thus probe key issues, topics, and prospects in the eclectic field of design. Within the conference theme ‘[ _ ] With Design: Reinventing Design Modes,’ IASDR’ 2021 attracted 17 proposals that grasped this biannual occasion for reflecting on critical positions in design, revisit historical trajectories of design, reimagine design impacts through its simultaneously temporal, economic, artistic, cultural and philosophical effects, and help shape the ‘new normal’ in and beyond the pandemic period.

The selected workshop proposals found encouragement in approaching the IASDR’ 2021 conference as a safe place to question any themes, including History, Criticality, Business, Alternative and Social. They represent confusions and concerns both of the organizers and the field for further exploring alternative, emerging, yet-to-articulate modes of being, sensing, making, and learning together. For provoking the debate, the proposals commonly start with asking what are modes of design for and why such modes are needed in the first place? Consequently, it leads to the question of whether design research can be ‘unmoded’ and possibly reinvent it as ‘mode-less.’

The workshops presented address and challenge design researchers committed to emancipatory values as newly introduced technologies and social contexts required to make these systems more legible, engaging, usable, and responsible. The proposals suggest that ‘unmoding’ or unlearning commonplace principles behind design research pay more attention to the significance of artful social and collaborative work. The majority of workshop organizers are women who embark on the project of ‘unmoding’ design. It is indicative of an evolving response to a rapidly changing world that demands the radical relinking of already pre-existing traditions on the streets, in new media, art, health, education, and everyday life.