Plot(s) Journal of Design Studies is an annual peer-reviewed publication run by the graduate students in Parsons School of Design’s MA Design Studies program. Since our first issue in 2014, we have published this journal as a cross-disciplinary endeavor with its main focus in exploring, questioning, and subverting the multiple definitions assigned to design. We are pleased to present a double-issue printed with both Volumes V and VI.

In keeping up with the journal’s ethos, the authors in this volume have explored design in relation to populism, pedestrian and neighborhood life, geospatial technology rhetoric, the urban video game landscape, and the experience of culture shock. These essays reflect the interdisciplinary nature of design studies and represent how the practice of design can give rise to larger conversations in connection to cultural, political, and scientific forces. Some contributors look at the fictional and utopian aspects of design, which I think show the boundless and progressive character of design studies and the role it plays in moving us forward. As professor Susan Yelavich observes, “Design Studies opens a necessary space for reflection on and active responses to the consequences and potentialities of design in negotiating our entanglements with the world.”

We hope that this issue, and the collection we are leaving behind on the online platform, leave you with a broader horizon of design discourse and how design shapes everyday human experiences. As scholars of design studies, we firmly believe that conversations between disciplines will further push us to use design as a means of expanding our perception of the world.