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,
Fragmentation of advanced knowledge
Search for new integrative diciplines to to complement art and sciences
Serving to purpose of enriching human life
Design

Today,
Fragmentation of advanced knowledge
Search for new integrative diciplines to to complement art and sciences
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