Abstract
The rapid proliferation of generative AI has precipitated a foundational crisis in design education, challenging long-standing pedagogical models and the very definition of authentic student work. While its symptoms are widely recognized, the design field lacks a formal theory for diagnosing this and other systemic failures. This paper introduces and formalizes the "Ought-Is Problem" as a foundational theory for design critique, defining it as the consequential gap between a designer's idealized model of a system and its users ("Ought") and the observable, complex reality of human behavior ("Is"). We argue that this cognitive dissonance is the root cause of many design failures. To demonstrate the theory's urgent relevance and diagnostic power, this paper deconstructs the current AI-driven "authenticity crisis" in higher education as a catastrophic, yet predictable, failure of an "Ought" pedagogical system. By formalizing this concept, we provide an essential diagnostic tool to guide the critical and reflective practice demanded by the "Design Next" era.
Keywords
Design Theory; Ought-Is Problem; Design Education; Human-Centered AI
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.609
Citation
Mosher, F.(2025) The Ought-Is Problem: A Foundational Theory for Diagnosing the AI-Driven Crisis in Design Education, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.609
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 12 - Design Education
The Ought-Is Problem: A Foundational Theory for Diagnosing the AI-Driven Crisis in Design Education
The rapid proliferation of generative AI has precipitated a foundational crisis in design education, challenging long-standing pedagogical models and the very definition of authentic student work. While its symptoms are widely recognized, the design field lacks a formal theory for diagnosing this and other systemic failures. This paper introduces and formalizes the "Ought-Is Problem" as a foundational theory for design critique, defining it as the consequential gap between a designer's idealized model of a system and its users ("Ought") and the observable, complex reality of human behavior ("Is"). We argue that this cognitive dissonance is the root cause of many design failures. To demonstrate the theory's urgent relevance and diagnostic power, this paper deconstructs the current AI-driven "authenticity crisis" in higher education as a catastrophic, yet predictable, failure of an "Ought" pedagogical system. By formalizing this concept, we provide an essential diagnostic tool to guide the critical and reflective practice demanded by the "Design Next" era.