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A one-sop-shop to learn about the power of human-centered design and put it into practice. Includes The field guide to human-centered design and other books, guides, and free downloads to help you routinely innovate and solve big problems.

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Design Kit is IDEO.org’s platform to learn human-centered design, a creative approach to solving the world’s most difficult problems.

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Empathy is central to the design thinking process.

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Empathy is central to the design thinking process.

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"Empathy is the capacity to step into other people’s shoes, to understand their lives, and start to solve problems from their perspectives. Human-
centered design is premised on empathy, on the idea that the people you’re designing for are your roadmap to innovative solutions. All you have to
do is empathize, understand them, and bring them along with you in the design process.

Immersing yourself in another world not only opens you up to new creative possibilities, but it allows you to leave behind preconceived ideas and outmoded ways of thinking. Empathizing with the people you’re designing for is the best route to truly grasping the context and complexities of their lives. But most importantly, it keeps the
people you’re designing for squarely grounded in
the center of your work."

(from The Filed Guide to Human-Centered Design - IDEO)

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Design Kit is IDEO.org's platform to learn human-centered design, a creative approach to solving the world's most difficult problems.

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Learn more about human-centered design and join IDEO.org's online learning community at www.designkit.org.

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Design Thinking for Educators - created by IDEO

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Design Thinking for Educators - created by IDEO

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"Classrooms and schools across the world are facing design challenges every single day, from teacher feedback systems to daily schedules. Wherever they fall on the spectrum of scale – the challenges educators are confronted with are real, complex, and varied. And as such, they require new perspectives, new tools, and new approaches. Design Thinking is one of them.

What kind of challenges can be addressed using Design Thinking?

Educators across the nation have been using Design Thinking to solve challenges in their work. Projects range in scope and scale including design solutions- from curriculum, to space, to processes and to systems— addressing problems in the classroom and across entire districts."

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Design thinking is a mindset. It is the confidence that everyone can be part of creating a more desirable future, and a process to take action when faced with a difficult challenge. That kind of optimism is well needed in education.

Classrooms and schools across the world are facing design challenges every single day, from teacher feedback systems to daily schedules. Wherever they fall on the spectrum of scale - the challenges educators are confronted with are real, complex, and varied. And as such, they require new perspectives, new tools, and new approaches. Design thinking is one of them.

We have a new resource- The Co-Designing Schools Toolkit, which supports educators to collaboratively create equitable change in schools through a community-led, equity-centered, and design-driven process.

You can still download the classic Design Thinking for Educators toolkits + workbook here.

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Design thinking is a mindset. It is the confidence that everyone can be part of creating a more desirable future, and a process to take action when faced with a difficult challenge. That kind of optimism is well needed in education.

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Have you ever come across a problem so complex that you struggled to know where to start? Then you might have stumbled upon a wicked problem. While wicked problems may not have a definite solution, there are certainly things you can do to mitigate any negative effects. When you learn how to tackle wicked problems, you learn how to improve the world and the lives of the people who live in it. Here, you'll learn the ten characteristics of a wicked problem and five steps to tackle wicked problems.
What Is a Wicked Problem?

A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that's difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. Wicked problems lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.

Classic examples of wicked problems are these:

What is the Difference between Puzzles, Problems and Wicked Problems?

Let's create an overview by first looking into the difference between a puzzle and a problem, and then afterwards we'll examine wicked problems.

Which Wicked Problems Do We Need to Deal with?

Many of the design problems we face are wicked problems, where clarifying the problem is often as big a task as solving it... or perhaps even bigger. Wicked problems are problems with many interdependent factors making them seem impossible to solve as there is no definitive formula for a wicked problem.

A wicked problem is often a social or cultural problem. For example, how would you try to solve global issues such as poverty... or education? What about climate change, and access to clean drinking water? It's hard to know where to begin, right? That's because they're all wicked problems.

What makes them even worse is the way they're intertwined with one another. If you try to address an element of one problem, you'll likely cause unexpected consequences in another. No wonder they're wicked! It's clear to see that standard problem-solving techniques just aren't going to cut it when you've got a wicked problem on your hands.

You'll need to gain a much deeper insight into the people involved and learn how to reframe the problem entirely if you want to have any sort of chance at coming up with a valuable solution.

10 Characteristics of a Wicked Problem

As you can see, we need to dig deeper to understand the essence of wicked problems. Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, professors of design and urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, first coined the term wicked problem in "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning" (1973). In the paper, they detail ten important characteristics that describe a wicked problem:

1. There is no definitive formula for a wicked problem.

2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule-there's no way to know whether your solution is final.

3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false (right or wrong); they can only be good or bad.

4. You cannot immediately test a solution to a wicked problem.

5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation" because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error-every attempt counts significantly.

6. Wicked problems do not have a set number of potential solutions.

7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.

8. Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.

9. There is always more than one explanation for a wicked problem because the explanations vary greatly depending on the individual's perspective.

10. The planner/designer has no right to be wrong and must be fully responsible for their actions.

We still face the classic wicked problems in today's world; however, there are further examples we now have to consider. Business strategy, for example, is now often classed as a wicked problem because strategy-related issues normally meet at least five of the characteristics listed above.

From Wicked Problems to Complex Socio-Technical Systems

The rapid technological advancement of the 21st century has, in many ways, mutated wicked problems. In today's hyperconnected world, it is difficult to look at problems in isolation.

Let's look at sustainability, for example. Recycling is often considered as one of the solutions to achieve sustainability. Don Norman, in his two-part essay for FastCompany, examined recycling and remarked: "I am an expert on complex design systems. Even I can't figure out recycling."

He describes in detail how difficult it is for people to send their household waste to get recycled. There are different rules for different materials-paper, plastics, glass, metals. And within a category, say, plastic, there are different rules for different types of plastic in different places. Not all plastics can be recycled. Those that can be recycled, demand specialized equipment and processes that are not universally available.

"Recycling is a poor solution to the wrong problem."

- Don Norman

The complexity of recycling is a problem. But why do we need to recycle at all?

It's because most of the products we use in our lives are made from non-reusable materials. Consider smartphones-most, if not all, have batteries that cannot be separated from the device. If your battery no longer functions as intended, you must replace it with a new phone.

What if the iPhone had a removable battery, which could be fixed or replaced so that you didn't have to throw out the entire phone, if (when) the battery died? What if phones weren't built to crack or become obsolete within a short time?

What if companies considered alternate materials to manufacture phones, or government legislation made it mandatory for companies to take back all their material, and put them back into the manufacturing process? The piles of garbage on the planet are a part of what Don Norman calls complex socio-technical systems. Let's hear more on this from Don Norman:

Wicked problems, or as Don Norman prefers to call them, complex socio-technical systems, are not isolated. They are intertwined in existing systems-manufacturing systems and economic systems, political, social and cultural systems, technological and legal systems. And each of those systems is connected with the other.

So, how can you start to tackle wicked problems, both old and new? Let's look at how design thinking-more specifically, systems thinking and agile methodology -can help us start to untangle the web of a complex socio-technical system.

Wicked Problems and Design Thinking

The design theorist and academic Richard Buchanan connected design thinking to the innovation necessary to begin tackling wicked problems. Originally used in the context of social planning, the term "wicked problems" had been popularized in the paper "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking" (1992) by Buchanan. Various thought leaders following Buchanan continued on to suggest we utilize systems thinking when faced with complex design problems, but what does that look like in practice for a designer tackling a wicked problem and how can we integrate it with a collaborative agile methodology?

A Combination of Systems Thinking and Agile Methodology Can Help You Tackle Wicked Problems

Design thinkers proceeded to highlight how we utilize systems thinking when faced with complex design problems.

Systems thinking is the process of understanding how components of a system influence each other as well as other systems-and therefore it's pretty much perfect for wicked problems!

And it's even better when combined with an agile methodology, an iterative approach to design and product development. Agile methodology helps to improve solutions through collaboration. This agile, collaborative environment breeds the ability to be efficient and effectively meet the stakeholders ' changing requirements.

Together, systems thinking and agile methodology lead us to a better solution at each iteration as they both evolve with the wicked problem.

In an agile methodology, every iteration incorporates feedback from the previous release. This process can help you tackle wicked problems when it's combined with systems thinking.

5 Ways to Apply Systems Thinking and Agile Methodology in Your Work

If you've been faced with a wicked problem in the past, you'll have undoubtedly experienced frustration from not knowing where or how to begin. There's no shame in that-issues which are difficult or nearly impossible to solve will do that to a person! The next time you and your team must tackle a wicked problem, you can use these five handy methods which are based on systems thinking and agile methodology:
1. Break down information into nodes and links.
You can utilize systems thinking if you break the information down into nodes (chunks of information such as objects, people or concepts) and links (the connections and relationships between the nodes). This will make your private mental models (your representations of external reality) visible to the outside world and help you face wicked problems more effectively. Jay Wright Forrester, a pioneer in computer engineering and systems science, put it nicely when he said:

"The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world, government or country. He has only selected concepts, and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the real system."

-Jay Wright Forrester

In this illustration, the nodes are circled in red and the links are the red lines drawn between the nodes. All four illustrations are systems models that participants created from Tom Wujec's workshops on collaborative visualization and systems thinking.

2. Visualize the information.
When you sketch out and place information into a physical space, it will help both you and your team take in and understand the systems at hand-as well as the relationships within and between them.
3. Collaborate and include stakeholders in the process.
Share your mental models to help other people build on your ideas, and vice versa. Your team can synthesize several points of view when you create physical drawings and group notes to produce different systems models.
4. Release solutions quickly to gather continuous feedback.
Feedback of success helps to solve problems which we don't have one single obviously correct answer for. The more feedback you gather from your users and stakeholders, the more guidance you'll have to get to the next step.
5. Carry out multiple iterations.
You and your team have the chance to utilize feedback at each iteration. The more iterations you do, the more likely you'll determine what changes are needed to further improve the solution to your wicked problem.

You'll build a bridge between the existing solution and the next iteration when you combine user and stakeholder feedback with your team's thoughts and ideas.

The Take Away

As designers, we have the responsibility to generate the best solution possible even when the wicked problem itself is indeterminate and the best solution does not yet exist. A combination of systems thinking and agile methodology can help us tackle these wicked problems. It encourages us to utilize these practices and share them with others so that we can, together, get to the next iteration of the design process.

When you start to tackle wicked problems, you can start to improve the world and the lives of the people who live in it. As a reminder, the five steps to do this are:

1. Break down information into nodes and links.

2. Visualize the information.

3. Collaborate and include stakeholders in the process.

4. Release solutions quickly and gather continuous feedback.

5. Carry out multiple iterations.

References & Where To Learn More

Rittel, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences, 4(2), 155-169.

Buchanan, Richard. (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues, Vol. 8, No. 2, (Spring, 1992), 5-21.

Ana de Almeida Kumlien & Paul Coughlan, Wicked problems and how to solve them, 2018.

John C. Camillus, Strategy as a Wicked Problem, 2006.

Amy C. Edmundson, Wicked-Problem Solvers, 2016.

John Kolko, Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving, 2012.

Stony Brook University, What's a Wicked Problem?

Tom Wujec, TEDGlobal, Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast, 2013:

Images

Hero Image: © Diana Parkhouse, Unsplash License.

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What Are Wicked Problems and How Might We Solve Them?

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Follow in the footsteps of many successful organizations and learn five steps to tackle wicked problems-by combining systems thinking with agile methodology.

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This is where you frame the problem that you will solve with your design. Verbalize your challenge carefully. Announce something actionable, not so open that you won’t be able to attack it, nor so closed and specific that it points to the solution. Something relevant and that you feel like solving! A good HMW will open the way to some great creative exploration.

The How Might We phrasing is very deliberate, as it incorporates some key principles:

HOW - assumes there is a solution
MIGHT - we free ourselves from judgements and explore all avenues
WE - we do it together, welcoming all perspectives and experiences

Use the link below to learn some idea exploration techniques.

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How-Might-We questions are a way to frame your ideation, and often used for launching brainstorms. This worksheet gives some strategies to use your current perspective on the challenge to create different How-Might-We questions that may prompt an array of fruitful ideas. The goal is to create questions that provoke meaningful and relevant ideas; do so by keeping the questions insightful and nuanced.

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"How Might We" Questions - Stanford d.school

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How-Might-We questions are a way to frame your ideation, and often used for launching brainstorms. This worksheet gives some strategies to use your current perspective on the challenge to create different How-Might-We questions that may prompt an array of fruitful ideas. The goal is to create questi

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"Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. Involving five phases—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test—it is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown."

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What is Design Thinking? Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions...

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How to use design thinking to redesign education? An example. 

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How to use design thinking to redesign education? An example. 

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As a result of an exploration of problems in education, the California design firm IDEO created School Retool – a professional development fellowship that helps school leaders redesign school culture using small, scrappy experiments called “hacks.” Hacks may start small, but they're built on research-based practices that lead to Deeper Learning, and can create the kind of big change you aspire to—namely, preparing your students for life in the real world.

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School Retool is a professional development fellowship that helps school leaders like you redesign your school culture using small, scrappy experiments called 'hacks.'

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The double diamond is the figure created when we visually describe the design thinking cycles of diverging and converging ideas, first to arrive at a solution we want to explore, then to prototype it and test it. As we get feedbacks from the testing, we iterate our solution and go back to the beginning of the cycle.

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What is design and how does that apply to me as an educator?

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What is design and how does that apply to me as an educator?

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1. All design is intentional problem-solving, through a series of sequenced actions that have the goal of creating or redesigning a process, a service or an artifact.
2. All design must stem from an exploration of what the user needs (and that is not necessarily what we or they themselves think they need). That usually involves a deep dive into the issue at hand, through research, interviews and observation techniques. What we are looking for, at this phase, is the right question, not the right answer.
3. The term “design thinking” describes the structured process which allows for a deliberate, thorough and considered approach to solving problems, as first described by Richard Buchanan in his 1990’s paper “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking”.
4. Design that is not user-centered is not design, it is art.
5. Design thinking can be used to explore a problem in your school or in your practice; for example, “how might we as teachers share resources and plans and collaborate better”, or “how might we optimize the little time available to learn about new practices”. It can also be used for students in projects, to define problems they want to solve and explore solutions: “how might we use technology to make people aware of water consumption.”

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The term "Design Thinking" dates back to the 1987 book by Peter Rowe; "Design Thinking." In that book he describes the way that architects and urban planners would approach design problems. However, the idea that there was a specific pattern of problem solving in "design thought" came much earlier in Herbert A Simon's book, "The Science of the Artificial" which was published in 1969. The concept was popularized in the early 1990s by Richard Buchanan in his article "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking".

Ralph Caplan, the design consultant, sums up the need for design thinking with; "Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous."

Author/Copyright holder: Christine Prefontaine. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0

A simple overview of design thinking as a problem solving process.

Problem-Solving and Two Schools of Thought

Design thinking is concerned with solving problems through design. The idea being that the future output of the process will provide a better answer than the one already available or if nothing is available - something entirely new.

It is an unconstrained methodology where it is possible that the designer (or design team) will work on many possible solutions at once. It enables designers to consider the problem in many different ways and speculate on both the past and future of the problem too.

This is in contrast to the scientific method of problem solving which requires a highly-defined problem which focuses on delivering a single solution.

This difference was first noted by Brian Lawson, a psychologist, in 1972. He conducted an experiment in which scientists and architects were asked to build a structure from colored blocks. He provided some basic rules for the project and observed how they approached it. The scientists looked to move through a simple series of solutions based on the outcome and entire rule set. The architects, in contrast, simply focused on the desired end-state and then tested to see if the solution they had found met the rules.

This led to the idea that scientists solve problems by a process of analysis, whilst designers solve problems by synthesis. However, later evidence suggests that designers apply both forms of problem solving to attain "design thinking".

They do this via a process of divergent thinking. A designer will examine as many possible solutions at the beginning of a process as they can think of - then they will apply the scientific side (convergent thinking) to narrow these solutions down to the best output.

Author/Copyright holder: Paris-Est d.school at Ecole des Ponts . Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

Design thinking can be as simple or as complex as the business and users require. This IDEO process can be seen as a 3 part process or a 9 part process.

The Design Thinking Process

Design thinking is essentially a process which moves from problem to solution via some clear intermediate points. The classic approach, as proposed by Herbert A Simon, is offered here:

Definition - where the problem is defined as best as possible prior to solving it

Research - where the designers examine as much data as they feel necessary to be able to fully contribute to the problem solving process

Ideation - where the designer commences creating possible solutions without examining their practicality until a large number of solutions has been proposed. Once this is done, impractical solutions are eliminated or played with until they become practical.

Prototyping - where the best ideas are simulated in some means so that their value can be explored with users

Choosing - where the best idea is selected from the multiple prototypes

Implementing - where that idea is built and delivered as a product

Testing - where the product is tested with the user in order to ensure that it solves the original problem in an effective manner

There are many other design thinking processes outlined in literature - most of which are a truncated version of the above process combining or skipping stages.

Author/Copyright holder: Dean Meyers . Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-ND 2.0

Here we see a more complex interpretation of the design thinking process and how it fits into the larger business sphere.

The Principles of Design Thinking

In the book, Design thinking: Understand, Improve Apply, Plattner and Meinel offer four underlying principles for design thinking:

Human - all design is of a social nature

Ambiguity - design thinking preserves and embraces ambiguity

Re-design - all design processes are in fact re-design of existing processes

Tangibility - the design process to make something tangible will facilitate communication of that design

It is also worth noting that design thinking functions independently of the design methods employed in any given design process. Design methods are the tools employed (such as interviews, user research, prototypes, etc.) and the assumption is that there are many paths that may be used (e.g. different sets of methods applied) to reach the same "best" result.

Visuals and Design Thinking

Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that design thinking is not about graphic design per se. However, designers are often used to communicating their thinking visually and drawings, sketches, prototypes, etc. are often used to convey the ideas created within a design thinking process.

In fact, ideas which are hard to express easily in words are often given shape in the form of visual metaphors. Design thinking thus easily incorporates abstract thought processes - something that scientific thinking may find more challenging to accommodate.

Author/Copyright holder: Wiki4des . Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 3.0

Visual representations of how those involved in the design process might be thinking about a problem.

The Take Away

Design thinking is a process by which designers approach problem solving. It incorporates analytical, synthetic, divergent and convergent thinking to create a wide number of potential solutions and then narrow these down to a "best fit" solution. There are many ways to use a design thinking process to incorporate different methodologies to still reach the same end point. Designers must solve problems in order to add value through design.

Resources

Richard Buchanan's original article "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking," was published in Design Issues, vol. 8, no. 2, Spring 1992.

Peter Rowe's book from 1987 Design Thinking was published byCambridge: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-68067-7.

Herbert A Simon's book from 1969 The Sciences of the Artificial. Was published by Cambridge: MIT Press.

Plattner, Hasso; Meinel, Christoph; Leifer, Larry J., eds. (2011). Design thinking: understand, improve, apply. Understanding innovation. Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. pp. xiv-xvi.doi:10.1007/978-3-642-13757-0. ISBN 3642137563.

This fascinating case study looks at how IBM plans to bring design thinking to large scale businesses - http://www.wired.com/2016/01/ibms-got-a-plan-to-bring-design-thinking-to-big-business/

See how Pepsi's CEO, Indra Nooyi, implemented design thinking in her organization - https://hbr.org/2015/09/how-indra-nooyi-turned-design-thinking-into-strategy

Harvard Business Review examines design thinking and how it translates into action here - https://hbr.org/2015/09/design-for-action

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

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Design Thinking, Essential Problem Solving 101- It's More Than Scientific

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The term "Design Thinking" dates back to the 1987 book by Peter Rowe; "Design Thinking." In that book he describes the way that architects and urban planners would approach design problems. However, the idea that there was a specific pattern of problem solving in "design thought" came much earlier in Herbert A Simon's book, "The Science of the Artificial" which was published in 1969.

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Service design thinking is the discipline that applies the same framework of user-centered design to designing services instead of products, and can be very useful when we think of change management in education. Think of the 5 principles below in terms of redesigning school practices, for example. We should be user-centered – that is, the design stems from understanding the various users’ needs, wants, and their pain points; we should co-create the services and processes with all stakeholders; be holistic in considering all points of contact of our users with our service, including instruction delivery interfaces, schedule design and physical spaces; and so on.

(from This is Service Design Thinking, by Jakob Schneider and Mark Stickdorn)