Hi Ken,
This is a really easy issue to address if you have some perspectives on dynamic systems and the answers are almost impossible to see if you have a static picture of design outcomes.
The core problem is that designers accultured in the Art and Design mold expect to see a design (singular and with a single defined outcome measured against a single tight design brief) as the result of design activity.
That is - a single - design and - a single - design outcome - fixed ..... such as a poster, a design for an aircraft meal tray, a house, a road layout.
You can identify this particular limiting habituation of design understanding when people ask 'what is the best design?' or, for a complicated design context, they try to draw the context and design solution out as a fixed visual representation.
This kind of fixed static design thinking typical of traditional design assumes no feedback loops (and problematically it assumes that people should/could think their way through anything - a mistake).
It is one of the reasons that over and over I've been raising issues about 'behaviours of design contexts, interventions and outcomes'. The dynamics of behaviours is the necessary focus of design such design rather than a static evaluation of how well a design solution addresses its design brief.
For those who link in terms of design situations with feedback loops, a design context continuously changes and the effect of a design intervention also continuously changes.
In this dynamic milieu, there is no best design because what was best soon results in different outcomes than intended and is less or more valuable (compared to if it was thought of in classic fixed design terms).
The writings and theories of Rittel and others involved in planning and similar fields whose design situations are characterised by feedback loop driven dynamic behaviour came across this problem earlier than others but overlooked the need to design in terms of feedback loops. Those involved in new design fields such as design strategy will ..... eventually.... realise the feedback dynamics of behaviours is the main issue they need to address.
So, I suggest Rittel and Weber described what they didn't realise were feedback loop type design problems and they did this from the perspective of designers who think in terms of creating fixed outcome design solutions. If I'm right, this limited their understanding of the design issues unnecessarily and gave rise to false premises, viz, 'wicked problems'..
Rittel and Webber's 'wicked problem 'criteria look very different from the perspective of dynamic systems design (or system dynamics or non-linear control theory or...). As Don pointed out earlier today, designers have been forcing non-linear problems into a linear frame but even worse is to force them into a fixed frame and then assume they are insoluble or wicked.
Let's look at Rittel and Weber's 'wicked problem' criteria
1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
Answer: In fixed design terms this is a problem. Such situations, however, can usually be described and formulated easily in non-linear systems terms with feedback loops
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
Answer: So? This is straightforward and unproblematic in dynamic systems design. The design situation is dynamic - changing all the time. A problem occurs, however, if one tries to assume there is a stopping rule!
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad.
Answer: Yes. This is normal and not a problem. It is what one would expect of evaluating any design intervention whose benefits change over time. Better is to evaluate outcomes via, and against, multiple variables.
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
Answer: Yes. Ditto to 3). This is normal and not a problem. It is what one would expect of evaluating any design intervention whose benefits change over time. Better is to evaluate outcomes via and against multiple variables.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a one-shot operation; because there is little opportunity to learn by trial and error, every attempt counts significantly.
Answer: This is easily resolved by modelling and calibrating models against existing data. It is a serious problem, however, when designers attempt to work without modelling or worse try to think their way through situations of which they are physically incapable of predicting the behaviour, or worse still, using social design approaches to do the same.
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
Answer: Rittel and Weber were mistaken on this. Solution space analysis and solution space design theories are the tool to manage this kind of issue. Rittel and Weber seem to be falsely believing that 'a very large number of design possibilities' is identical to 'an infinite number of design possibilities'. In fact, it is increasingly relatively easy to address large numbers of solution options. Rittel and Weber seem to have fallen into the same kind of thought pattern as when people assume chaotic means not possible to model or derive theories about. Many of us have been deriving design solution space theories and decision models addressing very large solution set options since the 60s.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
Answer: A) It is not true and it is not a problem in dynamic system analysis; B) Most of what people regard as 'wicked problems' can be modelled via a relatively small suite of feedback loop model types.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.
Answer: Of course. Everything is interconnected. All designs are interventions in larger socio-technical systems. This is the standard condition for designing interventions in systems that have feedback loops. The design strategy is: i) create a representative dynamic model; ii) Include the design intervention in the model; iii) run the model to see what happens over time; iv) modify the design intervention and see how different design interventions play out; v) use solution space analysis strategies to investigate and identify optimal areas of design solution space; vi) rerun the model for designs in the optimal solutions space regions; vii) choose a design solution on the basis of the associated dynamic changes of the behaviour of the design outcomes and context .
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem’s resolution.
Answer: This position results from seeing design outcomes as fixed rather than dynamic situations
10. The planner has no right to be wrong.
Answer: The planner has no need to be 'wrong', however, in dynamic feedback loop design situations, people will like the planners solutions more sometimes than others.
Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Senior Lecturer
Researcher, Social Program Evaluation Research Unit
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Senior Lecturer, Dept of Design
Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia
Director, Design Out Crime Research Centre
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Saturday, 11 February 2012 1:47 PM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Wicked Problems
Dear Peter and Terry,
Peter’s comments on wicked problems seem quite apt. Peter wrote,
—snip—
I depart from Terry in agreeing with the social systems school that wicked problems are different by definition, have unpredictable patterns of development, and are impossible to measure for intervention. The very notion of "problem" is a mental model and not a phenomenon in the world, and agreement on problem solving must be reached by people with investment and stake in the actions to be resolved. Wicked problems are layered "problem systems" that are defined by agreement and not observation. Horst Rittel described 10 properties of wicked problems, and most of them are observations about the impossibility of conventional solutions (or "design").
—snip—
At the same time, I’d agree with Terry that many problems may be inappropriately classified as wicked problems.
Many wicked problems contain design problems embedded within them. Not all design problems are wicked problems, however.
Nearly all genuine problems in the applied social sciences have wicked elements. Nevertheless, many aspects of wicked problems have tractable elements that can be solved using different methods, leaving the wicked core behind for deeper work. Designers require appropriate training and education to identify the wicked core, and without appropriate skills, relatively few designers have the requisite ability to solve such problems.
Rittel and Webber (1973: 161-166) offer ten criteria that describe the nature of wicked problems:
“1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad.
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a one-shot operation; because there is little opportunity to learn by trial and error, every attempt counts significantly.
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively
describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem’s resolution.
10. The planner has no right to be wrong.”
Wicked problems have many causes. The wicked quality of the problem may not be a matter of feedback loops.
Some wicked problems are surprisingly simple yet thoroughly wicked.
Consider the case of three friends who dine together every week and somehow work out their food preference. Imagine that they dine out together on an evening when each of the three brings a date with strong different preferences when none of the new diners is willing to accept the preference of the others.
This points back to an earlier thread in which Birger argued that wicked problems do not yield to scientific research. He’s right. Derek argued that some research traditions give practitioners in appropriate design fields the ability to work more fruitfully with wicked problems than designers without a foundation in those fields. He’s right, too.
For me, the most fascinating aspect of the wicked problem has been finding ways to sort out those aspects of a problem that can be rendered tame from the core issues that remain wicked.
Yours,
Ken
Reference
Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Webber 1973. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences 4 (1973), pp. 155-169.
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3 9214 6078 |
Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design
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