I believe the problem with Simon’s defination of design as changing existing situations to preferable
ones, is that it does not explicitely 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 prefered 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 mentioed 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 characterises it as ‘wicked’ or ‘tame’.
Warm regards,
parag deshpande,
Faculty NID, India
PhD candidate, University of Limerick, Ireland
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