How can a technical object modify the way in which we interact? How do our relations change with the introduction of new technologies? Can our everyday routines prevent the diffusion of new products? What is the social impact of major infrastructural projects? Do working practices influence the way a design project is conceived and carried out? If we think about common innovations such as the substitution of the moka with coffee-capsules machines, the diffusion of the Wii console, the use of Tinder, the diffusion of various system for the separate collection of garbage or the construction of wind farms, those above are questions that we continuously raise. The course in Social Studies of Science and Technology intends to introduce students to approaches and methods enabling to look for answers to these questions in a systematic, rigorous and verifiable ways, so that these answers can be taken into account within the various phases of the design and engineering processes. The course aims at providing students with competences enabling them to take into account, describe, compare and discuss the ways in which projects to which they (will) contribute can influence social relations and, on the other hand, how social relations, through which any design or engineering project unfolds, can influence a project. The course consists then in an introduction to Social Studies of Science and Technology or, more shortly, Science and Technology Studies (STS) focused on design – broadly intended – and on those methodological tools, coming from social sciences, which can be integrated within engineering, architectural, product or communication design projects, in order to take into account the social complexity of what is designed. Two will be the inquiry methods on which the course will focus: ethnography and controversy mapping. The ethnographic method consists in the direct observation of people’s behaviors within their lifeworld. Ethnography will be tackled as ethnography of designing processes, as well as ethnography of the life of artifacts. Controversy mapping will be tackled as a tool in order to highlight the negotiating character of technological innovation and to describe specific situation where such negotiations took or takes place. Topics tackled along the course will be: the relations between science, technology and society; artifacts’ capacity to act and produce effects and the ways in which all that can be described thanks to the concepts of script and de-scription; the biography of artifacts and the domestication process they go through (Domestication Theory); the role of users in these processes; the tracking, analysis and mapping of design controversies; the relavance of gender in relation to technology; the shared management of innovation processes considering issues like the relations between expert and lay expert knowledge, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Technlogical Assessment and especially Constructive Technological Assessment (CTA), Social Acceptance of Technologies and Infrastructures. The approaches introduced through which all these topics will be tackled are Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), the Theory of Social Practices (TSP) and, especially, Actor-Network Theory (ANT). The course will tackle the various topics mainly through case studies – some introduced and discussed in class, other deepened through readings – and through home and class assignments, such as: comparison and schematization of articles; short descriptions of technical objects’ use through ethnographic observations; description of the social relations inscribed in technical objects; mapping of design controversies.