The next generation of designers, architects, engineers, etc. have a rough road ahead. Due to their strong role in shaping our future, they must face issues relating to inclusion, equality, and diversity, ensuring that the ‘Elder Boom’ generation have safe, useful, and independent housing, workplaces are planned and constructed in such a way that they are usable by the broader population, and social justice and equality are in focus when designing public buildings and spaces so as to eliminate prejudice and discrimination.

This implies that the built environment as we know it must be improved. Thus, those responsible for addressing upcoming challenges, i.e. future universal design thinkers, must be adequately equipped with various methodological tools and valuable experience of interdisciplinary work. Both aspects are essential to preparing them for real-life problems and projects, regardless of complexity.

What happens if architecture, interior architecture, engineering, and product design students spend a week together investigating the built environment from a critical design point of view? Can this upside-down way of thinking provide them with alternative starting points for the problem-solving process, and help them to identify and understand people's needs differently?

This paper describes a critical design method and presents the results of and lessons learned from conducting a one-week workshop based on this method. The outcomes of the workshop (critical design examples) were created to illuminate the built environment and so provide the students with first-hand experience of what can happen if the “dark side” of design thinking is ignored.