Just a quickie...
At 01:17 +0100 23.3.2003, Ken Friedman wrote:
>The major mistake in many articles is the failure to understand that
>many design problems are NOT wicked problems. Of all possible design
>problems, relatively few are wicked problems.
1) While not all design problems are wicked problems, it may well be
so that the ability to deal with "wickedness" is something that
design research should focus a lot of attention to.
One part of the wickedness is that the problem eludes definition, and
that the definition is a part of the solution. Hence the fact that
something appears to be a non-wicked problem may also be an artifact
of a wrong assessment of the situation, thus hiding its true
wickedness.
I believe (= belief not provable fact) that most design problems are
solved this way, ignoring and/or obscuring the potential wickedness.
2) Equally, I believe that the obvious wickedness of a class of
problems is preventing them from being addressed by serious and
conscious design efforts.
Society would benefit if we would develop better ways to address
these wicked problems, since they continue to persist and get worse
if nobody attempts to deal with them, or if they are addressed badly.
Therefore I think that wicked problems are a good focus for design
research, and that good contributions for what do to about them are
highly valuable, but I agree with you (= my interpretation of what
you mean) that the classification 'wicked' should not be used simply
to justify weird and lazy approaches.
But it seems to me that I believe there is more 'true wickedness' out
there than what you seem to think. I think this is mainly because the
dominant traditions and systems are reductionist, and they do not
necessarily care whether they can deal with the whole - the
non-wicked parts suffice. As a result, society and people usually
suffer most, while the organizations that make their living with
problem solving activities, are quite happy and do not run the risk
of running out of business as each of their solutions creates a new
problem to be solved elsewhere.
best, kh
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