Dear Parag,
While I understand the point of your note, I want to say that here --
as elsewhere -- you are not quoting Simon but changing his words and
concepts for your own.
He does not define the nature of _professional_ design. I agree with
you that a designer, that is, a professional employed to design,
designs as a service to someone else. Thus, for the professional
designer, the definition of preference rests with the client.
Simon defines the act of process of design. And he explicitly says
that everyone designs who engages in the process.
"Everyone designs," he writes, "who devises courses of action aimed
at changing existing situations into preferred ones"
I agree with you in your understanding of what distinguishes
professional designers from anyone who designs, but Simon does not
define professional designers. In fact, he does not here define
"designer." He describes the design process, no matter who does it.
I must respectfully disagree with you on what it is that makes a
problem wicked. The core issue in a wicked problem is not complexity,
but disagreement. Rittel (1972) and Rittel and Webber (1973)
specifically state the criteria that distinguish wicked problems from
other problems. The core features of wicked problems are aspects of
the situation and the world -- the problem is not or cannot be easily
defined; stakeholders do not agree on what the problem is; even when
stakeholders agree on the problem, they may not agree on how to solve
it; there is no clear stopping rule that tells us when a problem is
solved; wicked problems generally have better or worse solutions
rather than right or wrong solutions; wicked problems have no
objective measures of success, even though definitions may provide
objective targets; in wicked problems, every trial counts; wicked
problems generally have important dimensions involving ethics,
morals, politics, or even taste.
Despite this, a wicked problem may be quite simple. A good example of
a simple wicked problem is the questions, "Where shall we take Parag
for dinner when he visits us?" One of us says that we should serve
Indian food to honor the fact that you are Indian; another says that
the Indian restaurant here isn't very good, but the steak house is
the best restaurant in town and we should take you to the best
restaurant we have; a third says you might be a vegetarian so that
would be a mistake -- and so on. Now, of course, a sensible fellow
like myself would probably just ask what you'd like to eat -- but
you see the problem.
Once you've been here for three weeks, you'll be part of the next
wicked problem when we argue about what DVD to watch when Ben
Matthews and Chris Rust come by for the evening. Selecting and
playing a DVD is easy. Choosing among strongly-held preferences is
difficult. Unless, of course, everyone agrees with me that we should
watch that noir nouveau classic Usual Suspects -- except for my wife
who is writing part of her doctoral thesis on Clint Eastwood's
Unforgiven and needs to watch it again when we have only one DVD
player.
The week after, we'll get to complex wicked problems like the
appropriate policy on student support funds in relation to the
long-term contribution of education to GDP.
Yours,
Ken
--
References
Rittel, H. 1972. On the planning crisis: Systems analysis of the
"first and second generations." Bedrifts Okonomen, 8, 390-396.
Rittel, Horst .W. J. and Webber, Melvin M. "Dilemmas in a General
Theory of Planning," Policy Sciences, 1973, 4:155-169.
--
Parag Deshpande wrote:
I believe the problem with Simon's definition of design as changing
existing situations to preferable ones, is that it does not
explicitly mention who's situation it refers to. We all change our
existing situations for ourselves - some do it better than others,
agreed (so, everyone is a designer if we interpret Simon's definition
this way). But designers are trained to change other's existing
situation to their preferred ones. This is what design education
teaches designers and this is what designers do in their profession.
On Rittle and 'wicked' problems - While Rittle is much cited about
'wicked' problem, there are many others who have commented about
complexity of problem . Van Platter (in his conversation with Jeff
Conklin and Min Basadur, NextD Journal issue 10.1) has mentioned a
long list of authors who have pointed towards it. To me, Rittle's
main contribution is that he indicates towards increasing role of a
designer in understanding complex design situations. Afterall, it is,
the designer who identifies a problem and characterizes it as
'wicked' or 'tame'.
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