The real design thinking

Tagged with design thinking | problem-solving | wicked problems

How can we best solve social problems? This is the question behind what we do. Lately, design thinking has been offered up as one answer. And while authors like Tim Brown and Thomas Lockwood present the concept as a recent innovation, Horst Rittel and Melvin Weber, writing in the 1970s, unlock the concept so much more powerfully. They get at what it means to think about problems differently, not just to use different methods.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m attracted to the designers’ toolbox–to the user research, idea generation, visualization, and prototyping. But, coming from the social sciences, I’ve always found there to be something missing. Reading Rittel and Weber’s 1973 article, Dilemmas in A General Theory of Planning, gave voice to that feeling.

The article doesn’t sound all the compelling. Nor on first glance does it look all that practical. Too much thinking! But, that’s really the point. What design can help us to do is apply a different kind of logic; to challenge the notion that we can solve problems by isolating the causes and professionalizing the responses. Indeed, design can counter the dominant scientific problem-solving approach.

A lot of the recent ‘design’ thinking stuff inadvertently perpetuates the dominant approach. It takes a social problem as given and tries to generate a bunch of objectively good responses. That’s really not much different to professional problem-solving (i.e. policy-making, social planning, highway engineering, public health) where values are dismissed in favor of ‘optimal’ and ‘efficient’ solutions. Neither the new design thinker nor the professional problem-solver systematically look at what the right thing is to do. Indeed, Rittel and Weber’s description of the professional problem-solver could easily be confused for the new design thinker. They write, “With arrogant confidence, the early systems analysts pronounced themselves ready to take on anyone’s perceived problem, diagnostically to discover its hidden character, and then, having exposed its true nature, skillfully to excise its root causes. Two decades of experience have worn the self-assurance thin.”

Now, six-decades later, we’re still doing the same thing. Professional problem-solvers and design thinkers are still treating social problems as if they were science and engineering problems. Rittel and Weber sum up the difference. “As distinguished from problems in the natural sciences, which are definable and separable and may have solutions that are findable, the problems of governmental planning are ill-defined; and they rely upon elusive political judgment for resolution. Not solution. Social problems are never solved. At best they are only re-solved, over and over again.” They go on to call such social problems ‘wicked’ and identify ten ways they differ from the ‘tame’ varietal.

1. Problems can’t be defined until the solution has been found
2. There are no criteria for telling when ‘the’ solution has been found
3. Solutions are not true or false; only good or bad or better and worse
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution
5. Every implemented solution is consequential and cannot be fully undone
6. It is a matter of judgment whether to pursue and implement a solution
7. Every wicked problem is unique and context dependent
8. Every wicked problem is a symptom of another problem
9. There is no way to determine the ‘correct’ explanation for wicked problems
10. We’re liable for the consequences of our actions

We need an example. Take a ‘problem’ like obesity. Is it about lack of exercise or nutrition?  Is the lack of exercise and nutrition because of low incomes, or inadequate access to facilities, or insufficient information, or poor mental health, or high stress levels, or some combination of these things? If we say ‘lack of information’ is at least part of the problem then a solution becomes ‘provide more information.’ Defining the problem means also defining the solution. And yet a lot of the methods policy and design people use are sequential: first, understand the problem; then generate ideas; then build solutions. We don’t realize how easy it is to get locked into one solution set simply because of how the problem has first been described.

We also don’t acknowledge that how we choose to explain problems can say more about us, the so called problem-solvers, than the problem itself. Rittel and Weber offer an instructive example. ‘Crime’ can be explained by lots of things: not enough police, too many criminals, lax laws, deficient opportunity, cultural deprivation, easy access to weapons, unemployment, poverty, etc. We don’t know the ‘right’ combination of factors at play at any given point of time so we end up choosing the explanations that are most plausible; that most fit within our world views.

This is where I find the design thinking stuff disingenuous. And, I’m not immune either. We talk so much about listening to users, to those facing social problems, we forget that what we listen for is shaped by how we see the world. And rather than be upfront about that–and develop methods to put our biases out there–we look at the solutions that emerge as ‘obviously’ good because they came from the bottom-up.

So Rittel and Weber really make us think. They rightly challenge our hubris. They make us confront our values. They poke holes through our starting points. They dispute the logic of our methods. They remind us of the political and ethical bases of all of our actions. We’re going to try and take note.

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