Wicked problems in design thinking

WICKED PROBLEMS IN DESIGN THINKING

Richard Buchanan

ID 501 Advanced Product Development in Industrial Design

Alev Sönmez

METU Department of Industrial Design

Keywords

•Design thinking

•Wicked problems

•Liberal arts

•Analysis

•Synthesis

•Placements

•Categories

•Determinacy

•Underternined

•Indeterminacy

•Technologia

Richard Buchanan

Currently a Professor at Case Western University’s

Weatherhead School of Management, Richard Buchanan is

one of the world’s leading design theorists. Former head of

Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design, Buchanan

joined Weatherhead’s faculty in 2008. He is also co-editor of

Design Issues, a premier design journal published by MIT

Press.

“the effort of people to make the products that serve us in our

everyday lives”.

Design...

“It’s a very ambiguous term that’s gotten out of hand. For some people it’s a

cognitive process, for others it’s a set of skills and habits, for some it’s a

business slogan. And I’m afraid it’s deteriorated into that in many ways,

particularly at a company like IDEO. They have a formula that they regard as

“design thinking’.”

Design thinking...

“Designers see things in different ways than people in other fields, and

their way of seeing allows them to think of new possibilities for making.”

Rejects the idea of reducing design to a simple formula

“No single definition of design or professional branches , adequately covers the

diversity of ideas and methods gathered tohgether under the label.”

Despite the effort to discover foundations of design it is still flexible and

expanding in its meanings and connections.

Trade activity

Segmented profession

Field for technical research

Now should be recognized as a...

New liberal art of technological

culture

Trend of design thinking in 20th century

Liberal arts...

19th century,

•Encyclopedic education with different fields of subjects

•The n the circle of learning is divided into particular subject matters and

own methods.

• Integradet uderstanding of human experiences

• Further divided (patchwork of specializations)

Today,

Fragmentation of advanced knowledge

Search for new integrative diciplines to to complement art and sciences

Today,



Serving to purpose of enriching human life

Design

Today,



Emergence of Design Thinking

Concrete integrations of Knowkedge which combine the

therary and practise to for new productive purposes

Serving to purpose of enriching human life

Design

Is design necessary to be a profession, rather than

being a method of thinking

Without the engineering it is not possible to have a

working product, what about designer?

If the engineer is capable of designing a more user-

friendly product, then would the profession of design

be needed?

?

?

?

New centre of universe,

Indifinite interactions taking place within a course of nature

Not fixed and complete but capable of directions to new and different

results .

John Dewey

Old Liberal Arts

Specialization in the facts of a subject manner

Knowing

Knowledge is achieved by direct confirmity of ideas

Analysis

New Liberal Arts

The use of new diciplines of integrative thinking

Involving

Knowledge is achieved by orders of change

Synthesis

1st Science 2nd Art

John Dewey

Science as an art

“Because of technologies, a circular

relationship with science and art has been

established”

Technology

Knowledge of how to make and use artifacts/artifacts itself

Particular type of product/hardware

Art of experimental thinking, providing basis of

creating other types of product

Design in contemporary life...

•Significant factor in shaping human experience

•Employed to cultivate the subject matters that

are the focus of scientific curosity

“T he challenge is to gain a deeper understanding of design thinking

so that more cooperation and mutual benefit is possible between

those who apply design thinking to remarkably different problems and

subject matter.”

Persisting Problem

•Little room for the reflection of the discussion

between scientists and designers

•Confusion and breakdown of communication

Herbert Simon

"the proper study of mankind is the science of design, not

only as the professional component of a technical education but

as a core discipline for every liberally educated man.

How design affects contemporary life

4 areas that which is explored by professionals and also others

1.Design of symbloic and

visual communication

•Traditional work of graphic designer

•Now evolving to exploring problems of communicating

(informations,ideas , arguments.)

------------ SIGNS

2. Design of material

objects

•Traditional work of industrial designer

•Now evolving to exploring problems of construction in which form

as a deeper argument that unites aspects of other diciplines

informations,ideas , arguments. (arts, engineering, sciences)

------------ THINGS

3.Design of activities and

organizational services

•Traditional management

•Now evolving to exploring of better connections and consequences

through design thinking•Better communications in everday experience

------------ ACTIONS

4.Design of complex

systems or environments

•Traditional system engineering, architecture etc.

•Now evolving to exploring role of design in sustaining, integrating

human beings into ecological and socal environment•Better communications in everday experience

------------ THOUGHTS

Signs, materials , actions and thoughts are

• interconnected

•İnterpenetrated

•Consequences for innovation

“their primary concern begins in one area, but innovation comes when the

initial selection is repositioned at another point in the framework, raising

new questions and ideas”

Design thinking patterns is found not in a set of categories but in a rich,

diverse, and changing set of placements, such as those identified by

signs, things, actions, and thoughts.

CATEGORIE

S

PLACEMENT

S

•Fixed meanings

•Accepted by theory

•Basis of analyzing what

have already exist.

•Have boundaries to shape meaning, not fixed,

giving context to think

•Sources of new ideas and possibilities.

•Generates new perceptions

Inventiveness of designer – ability to return

placements and apply them into new

situations,seeing possibilities through

conceptual placemants

Liberal Art

Wicked Problems in Design Thinking

Scientists

Central probem of the

communication of designers

and scientist

While sharing a liberal art of design thinking ,they

are masters of specialized subject matters

Problems adressed by the designers

seldom fall solely within the

boundaries of scientists from divided

diciplines

Wicked Problems

a form of social or cultural problem that is

difficult to solve because of

incomplete, contradictory, and

changing requirements.

Linear Model of Design Process

1. Problem Identification (analytic)

2. Problem Solution (synthetic)

Linear Model of Design Process

•Based on determined problems

•İn defined situations

1. Problem Identification (analytic)

2. Problem Solution (synthetic)

Wicked Problem Approach by Rittel

•Process is not linear

•Indeterminacy

•No definitive conditions or limits for design

problems

•Social reality rather than theory of design

Design Problems are indetermined and wicked,

because design has no subject matter of its own apart

from what a designer conceives

Designer discover or invent a subject matter out of a

problem

Is it true? Do designers

really not move on

determined subject

matters or categories?

?

Designers also have

categorized subject

matters?

OR

Are they placements?

?Use placements Establish principle of

relevance for knowledge

Design and Technology

Technoloy Machines and products

Discipline of sysnthetic thinking

Technologia Systematic discipline

Design has a technologia Discipline of practical reasoning, argumentation

Power of design lies in overcoming limitations of verbal and symbolic

argument.

Persistent confusion about different modes or

agumnetation in different professions using design

thinking

Industrial Design

Engineering

Marketing

Seems opponents because of their model

differences approaching design problems

This contributes to a new awareness of

design being liberal art

Synthesis of 3 lines of reasoning

•Ideas of designers/maufacturers etc..

•Internal logic of products

•Desire of user to use the product in EDL