Investigation and Design in: V. Wulf; V. Pipek; D. Randall, M. Rohde; K. Schmidt; G. Stevens (eds): Socio Informatics – A Practice-based Perspective on the Design and Use of IT Artefacts, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018, pp. 221-242 Dave Randall Unique Adequacy Ltd Senior Professor, University of Siegen Visiting professor, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan Email: daverandall2008@gmail.com ABSTRACT 1. Introduction The problem of how best to relate design activities to the world in which its results are embedded is a longstanding one. Designed products of whatever kind by definition constitute a potential intervention in the world. Nevertheless and of course, we do not and cannot know in advance what that intervention will look like in any detail since that will be the product of the feasibility of both technological and oragisational changes and of the deliberations about such matters which go on both in and between organisations. This has not precluded a variety of attempts to characterize potential futures. They typically