designmay

DesignMay is a term used in design pedagogy and speculative design discourse to describe a time-bound approach to design processes that centers on the month of May. The concept treats May as a cultural and environmental inflection point, encouraging teams to schedule research, ideation, prototyping, and user testing within a seasonal framework. Although not a formal theory, designmay is employed in workshops and case studies to illustrate how calendars and contexts can influence design decisions and project management.

In practice, designmay invites teams to conduct field observations during spring, gather feedback from local communities at public events, and emphasize sustainability and outdoor usability. Projects drafted under a designmay rubric often feature rapid cycles of iteration, visible documentation of progress, and open sharing of outcomes at the end of the month. The approach can be used in product design, urban design, and service design, sometimes overlapping with design sprints and seasonal marketing concepts.

Critics argue that designmay can be overly prescriptive or arbitrary, potentially forcing teams to conform to a calendar rather than outcomes. Proponents contend that it provides a useful scaffold for collaboration, accountability, and community engagement, while offering a teachable example of how temporal context affects design choices. See also: design thinking, design sprint, seasonal design.