Affective-Driven Design: Emotions, Moods and Experiences as Catalysts for Socially Meaningful Design

Along with convening authors from various geographical regions, whom we thank for their participation and interest in contributing to this special issue of Diseña with a focus on ‘Affective-Driven Design’, the call we made in December 2019 briefly raised the issue of evolution and expansion of the boundaries of this disciplinary approach, a subject matter that is still relevant and that currently deserves to be mentioned again, since it is impossible to ignore the global context in which this issue of the journal was developed and is now published. Today, in August 2020, our world has already changed in comparison to the one that existed at the time the authors were summoned, which seems so distant and different now. At that time, in Chile, where Pontificia Universidad Católica is established, as well as in other countries whose population was awaking to injustice, social demands triggered a powerful change in the ways of thinking about and understanding society. However, what was looming was even more unpredictable and global. An unprecedented pandemic has hit the planet in the most diverse ways, claiming hundreds of thousands of human lives, depressing economies, halting industries, and changing our ways of life, as well as the values and meanings we grant to artifacts and living spaces. Reality has altered our priorities and, with it, our conception of society, probably forever.