This special issue is an attempt to collapse technology, design and the human experience into one and brings forward innovation as the fusion of these paradigms. Jointly edited by the Responsive Environments and Artifacts Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Domus, the issue goes back to the fundamental basics of design perception, materiality, interaction, craft and adaptation. Addressing innovation from the global scale down to the micro-world as it relates to the human experience, we explore the dynamic and impactful role of design hybrids to foster enhanced relationships between human beings and their surroundings.

At the core of this Innovation issue is an inquiry into the multiple ways that the rapid pace of innovation affects how we perceive, respond and adapt to our environment. And how these experiential transformations in turn influence the spatial, material and even cultural development of our surroundings by adopting a looped feedback process that is a fundamental catalyst of innovation. This issue presents alternative perspectives to design-driven innovation at the intersection of advanced research and forward-looking practices for positive changes to our present and future world, and to the ways we will inhabit it.