A Tension is All You Need: A Theory on Why Humans Make Things

In this paper, I postulate tension as a conceptual framework to understand why humans create the many things we see in our modern world. Tension is a conceptual state which arises when there is an emotive gap between multiple imagined alternatives. In this conceptualisation, it is tension which provokes the design process where humans create, or use things (which I label as artefacts) to resolve their tension(s).Similar to Popperian ideas, tensions, like problems, are inevitable. Creating and using artefacts may resolve the designer's tension, however this process will also create new tensions for the designer, and new tensions for other humans. Tension helps to conceptualise what is a problem in modern societies. At the same time, it addresses a common question in the design literature—are all humans designers?