Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Robert Farrell and Cli Hooker, School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2305, Australia
We examine the claim that design is demarcated from science by having wicked
problems while science does not and argue that it is wrong. We examine each of
the ten features Rittel and Weber hold to be characteristic of wicked problems
and show that they derive from three general sources common to science and
design: agent nitude, system complexity and problem normativity, and play
analogous roles in each. This provides the basis for a common core cognitive
process to design and science. Underlying our arguments is a shift to a strategic
problem-solving conception of method in both disciplines that opens up new
opportunities for synergetic cross-disciplinary research and practice.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: wicked problems, design methodology, scientic method, epistemology, complexity
n important class of argument intended to distinguish design from science is focussed around the claim that design is characteristically faced
with wicked problems whereas science is not. The two kinds of problem are argued to require dierent skills and methods for their solution. Therefore, design and science are distinct types of intellectual study and production.
An inuential position of this kind was set out by Rittel and Weber in their
landmark paper:
. the classical paradigm of science and engineering e the paradigm that
has underlain modern professionalism e is not applicable to the problems
of open societal systems. . the cognitive and occupational styles of the
professions e mimicking the cognitive style of science and the occupational style of engineering e have just not worked on a wide array of social
problems. . We shall want to suggest that the social professions were
misled somewhere along the line into assuming that they could be applied
scientists e that they could solve problems in the ways that scientists can
solve their sorts of problems. The error has been a serious one.
Corresponding author:
Cli Hooker.
Cli.Hooker@newcastle.edu.au
The kinds of problems that planners deal with e societal problems e are
inherently dierent from the problems that scientists and perhaps some
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to make various distinctions between problems of the tame and wicked sorts,
and thus of the methods and skills required to solve them. But contrary to
common-enough talk where it is made to look as if a problem domain is either
all fully tame or all fully wicked, with nothing in between, the tame/wicked
distinction is not a unitary whole but is made up of a number of dierent features each varying in its degree of tameness and wickedness across problems.
The eect of this is to undercut any argument that simplistically concludes
from exhibiting some wicked problems in design and some tame problems in science that there is a principled division between design and science. Instead, we
shall argue that each of design and science will contain various problems that to
varying degrees are wicked across various features of wickedness, and complementarily for tameness. To defend a principled dierence in cognitive process
between design and science it is then necessary to show that these multiple differences of degree nonetheless support a principled dierence of kind in cognitive process. But Section 2 will show that this cannot be done.
These days this last claim is the more important one. This is because many more
designers today would no doubt allow that there is no simple division of problems
between design and science, yet nonetheless want to hold that there are important
cognitive dierences between the two. For instance, Zeisel (2005) and Koskinen,
Zimmerman, Binder, Redstrom, and Wensween (2011) hold that research occurs
within, and about, the design process, but the latter remains distinctive. Our contrary ambition here is to show that, at least in respect of their core problem-solving
processes, there is no arguable dierence between design and science. (The dierences, which remain real, must lie in their external pragmatic conditions and their
cognitive consequences in turn e see below.) It is crucial to doing this that we also
shift our conception of science, in particular of scientic method, from that which
prevailed in the 1970s when Rittel and Webber published their paper to a more
adequate one which gives a prominent place to strategic problem solving directed
at multi-valued knowledge acquisition. Such a notion was not always available.
For instance, behind Cross notion above, that science problems are mere puzzles
to be solved by applying well known rules to the data, lies the assumption that scientic research is xed by logic, that scientic method is a logical machine that
takes data as input and generates true or most probably true theories as output
using only sound logical inferences. But this once dominant conception of scientic method is now generally agreed by scholars of science to be fundamentally
awed3 and we are free to shift conceptions. Then, as we shall show, design and
science turn out to share the same core cognitive process. Thus, rather than
dividing design from science cognitively, the distinction helps unite them.
The analysis to follow claims to reveal wicked problem resolution as having a
core cognitive process at its heart deriving from agent nitude e manifested in
limited capacity, resource scarcity and ignorance e together with complexity
and normative constraint. The kind of cognitive process we have in mind is
indicated by that found in Goels study of design process (Goel, 1995): (I) an
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initial phase of problem space formation where the context of the design situation (e.g. location, interested parties), the general possibilities of the design situation, the putatively desired outcome of the design process and the normative
constraints applicable to it are each initially characterised, followed by (II) a
development/exploration phase where a trial space of various potential partial
solutions (e.g. in sketch or model form) is developed and explored and are allowed to mutually interact and are modied, often in interaction with negotiated modication of any and all of the elements of the initial phase (the
problem re-denition aspect) so as to access new resolution pathways and realisation of value, and (III) a nal production phase where the design outcome is
produced and normative value realised. In abstract, this is the core cognitive
process through which design problems are resolved and its 3-phase sequence,
with their distinctively dierent internal interactions, provides the cognitive
structure of the process. The characterisation is abstract and general, which allows many dierently detailed instantiations to suit individual circumstances,
e.g. between design and science and within each. This process is one among
many possible characterisations of an underlying core cognitive process and
while sketched suciently abstractly it has found widespread acceptance
among design theorists (cf. Zeisel, 2005, p. 20; also e.g. Cross, 2006; Lawson,
2005). Nonetheless we use it here only as illustration.
In addition to such a core process, there is a set of pragmatic factors characterising wicked problem situations that essentially manifest as defects in problem
specication (vagueness or incoherency) and tightness of normative
constraint, including normative conict, and these further complicate (and
can even prevent e maximum tightness) obtaining a resolution, though
without altering the underlying core problem-solving process. Though our
analysis to follow does reduce the features of wickedness to these fundamental
elements, cognitive and pragmatic, it does not reduce the practical wickedness
of wicked problems, rather it identies its origins. This analysis is valuable in
its own right as understanding and valuable practically because it provides a
principled framework for developing practical methodologies for resolving
each of the many dierent kinds of wicked problems.
Understandably, the great majority of the huge literature on wicked problems
is devoted to general methods for addressing them: integral thinking, morphological analysis, design analysis, cognitive mapping, and the like, sometimes
complemented by brief initial discussions of what makes for wickedness.4
This literature typically acknowledges at the outset that wicked problems
have cognitive as well as social, political and other aspects, but does not
attempt to extract and characterise their cognitive character.5 But doing that
is precisely what is required to address the issue of whether wickedness divides
design from science as cognitive processes. It is obvious that the problems of
design and science dier in all sorts of ways, for instance in the prevalence
of private clients, the focus on commercial and political versus epistemic
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norms, and so on. And addressing those features as part of problem solving
certainly has an important cognitive component to it; for instance, diversity
of clients often requires negotiation among conicting outcome expectations.
But it is not obvious, and we shall argue groundless, to infer from those dierences that design and science use dierent core cognitive problem-solving processes. Analogously, the sciences have obvious dierences between them e
compare, say, cosmology with geology with cellular biology e but they are
all considered sciences, we do not infer that they therefore dier in their
core cognitive process. In this paper we focus our attention on extracting
the cognitive dimension from the original characterisation of wickedness set
out in the Rittel/Webber paper, as an exemplar for analyses of other characterisations. In the upshot, this will serve as something of an original analysis of
wickedness and provide good grounds for arguing that wickedness does not
divide design from science on the basis of core cognitive process.
Meanwhile, we recognise that addressing the methodological issues underlying
any proposed tame/wicked divide will still leave other asserted dierences between design and science outstanding, in particular the natural/articial and
descriptiveefactual/prescriptiveenormative dierences. We have addressed
these issues elsewhere (Farrell & Hooker 2012a, 2012b) and will similarly
address other, derivative dierences.6 While considering all these is beyond
the scope of this paper, we contend that the strategic conception of science
we advocate forms the proper foundation for also dealing in a systematic
way with these further issues e and comes out in favour of our position concerning the sameness of the core cognitive processes of science and design.
In what follows we delineate three conditions in the problem-solving context
whose methodological consequences, either singly or in combination, constitute wickedness. (For convenience, we take specifying the condition to also
include its methodological consequences.) We then analyse Rittel and Webbers paper and classify their wickedness-making features in terms of these
three conditions. Along the way we discuss how these three aspects of wickedness are also fully present in science.
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acquire knowledge of the world and to achieve our other goals in the world.
An immediate expression of our nitude is our ignorance: if we had unlimited
cognitive capacities and resources then we would not be ignorant. As it is, we
are ignorant, not just of the facts and true theories, but of methods for validly
establishing these, the concepts required to specify them and the criteria for
correctly deciding such things. Consequently, whenever a problem situation
is characterised by such deep ignorance, or when a problem situation must
be resolved but the available resources (including time) are nite and insucient for an optimal solution, to that extent the problem at hand can be
considered to be a wicked problem. This rst condition is the most important;
we contend that it is a necessary condition for wickedness.
Complexity. Every aspect of our world is characterisable as interactions between
partially nested hierarchies of complex systems having multiple feedback and
feedforward loops where multiple interactions among systems typically have
far-reaching consequences across many functional levels, such interactions
causing others in cascades that spread in unpredictable, irreversible, historydependent ways throughout their domains. This complex-systems nature of the
world has two general kinds of consequences relevant here. (A) It will often be
impossible to disentangle the consequences of specic actions from those of other
co-occurring interactions. (B) The outcomes of processes are dicult to predict,
amplifying our ignorance and exacerbating the limits imposed by nite resources.
Normativity. Human values and norms can become inextricably intertwined
with problem formulation and problem resolution. Notoriously, values and
norms are often in conict both between agents and even within an agents
normative commitments and require sucient resolution through compromise to permit a coherent and practicable problem resolution.
Each of these features poses a challenging aspect of the fundamental methodological problem: how it is possible to act intelligently and responsibly in a world characterised by deep limits on our problem-solving capacities? We contend that it is
the depth and extent of this methodological challenge that ultimately constitutes
the wickedness of a problem. The reduction to just three conditions produces a
much clearer concept of wickedness that, in turn, enables a sharply delineated critical comparison of design and science problems. To demonstrate that, we turn to
Rittel and Webbers discussion of wickedness and show that the ten features identied by them can be reduced to the methodological consequences of the three
conditions we have proposed. Along the way we will show how scientic problems
full both Rittel and Webbers ten features and our three conditions.
1.1
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becomes which few of these possibilities is currently most worth pursuing and
in which specic forms. Various options will be developed in more detail, their
resource demands and risks analysed and their merits spelled out for consideration. During that process more specic versions of the initial general problem
will be developed, some of them (e.g. the psycho-somatic option) perhaps
requiring a signicant reformulation of both what the problem is and what
criteria a solution would need to meet. A critical debate will develop about
these options, the upshot being that one or two of them will be selected to pursue, perhaps by individual laboratories, perhaps as cooperative ventures. After
the results of that round are in, the whole process can be repeated again and
again until an at-least-satisfactory explanation emerges within the investigatory resources available. Strikingly, Rittel himself provides a graph of search
pathway options that is of this same kind and clearly applies directly to science
as well as design.10
It was Popper who famously pointed out that the foundations of science are
not anchored on the rock of proven truths but instead driven down into a
swamp of possibilities just deep enough to achieve sucient stability to
continue research (Popper, 1980). It is not surprising that the same methodological process turns up in science also since, as noted above, it derives solely
from rationality in the face of nitude. In short, the cognitive dierences here
between the cognitive processes of design and science are minimal and matters
of degree, not kind.
This commonality becomes still clearer whenever scientists venture into new
unexplored territories, e.g. from Newtonian into relativistic or quantum domains, or where scientists are fundamentally re-evaluating previously explored
territory, e.g. re-exploring embryology in terms of cellular bio-synthetic pathways rather than earlier macro-physiological characterisations, in short whenever scientists are engaged in deep or revolutionary research. Faced with the
initial anomalous discrete spectral data that ultimately led to quantum theory,
scientists rst tried various Newtonian and quasi-Newtonian approaches to
understanding the data, even to the point of giving up energy conservation
to preserve a general Newtonian conception, before standard quantum theory
was tentatively accepted. Not only is there the exploration of accessible options, there is also the question of appropriate methods. For instance, in the
transition from Newtonian to quantum mechanics, the Newtonian measuring
methods are revealed to carry small, ineliminable residual errors and complementary Newtonian measurements become mutually excluding in quantum
theory, governed by the uncertainty relations. Thus, as with design, it is necessary to search for problemesolutionemethod options. To borrow from
Simons (1977) treatment of this situation, scientists will order the illdened, ill-structured, situation by assuming a structure and then see whether
it promises to bring about a solution to the original problem. It is clear from all
this that the problems that scientists encounter are not tame problems which
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of solving the problem is identical with the process of understanding its nature (p. 162). In the absence of normative diversity, this comes down to the
fact of many possible problememethodesolution options to explore. This
conception dominates their discussion.) The second reason given is . there
are no criteria for sucient understanding. If this is because we are ignorant
of how to formulate them until we better understand the eld then it is another
aspect of the rst reason, and one emphatically shared with science. Consider
Newtons mechanics and the perihelion of Mercury; it was not until Maxwell
had formulated electro-magnetic theory and mathematicians and experimentalists had sharpened the conict between it and mechanics that it was possible
for Einstein to formulate relativity theory as primarily a kinematical, not
dynamical, shift and provide a revolutionary explanation for the perihelion
rotation. This also shows that timing may not be only due to local pragmatic
factors but can derive from our condition of historical development e just as
in design. Alternatively, Rittel and Webber could be taken as arguing that the
absence of a stopping rule derives from irresolvably competitive norm-based
selection of problememethodesolution options and the option-dependence
of solution criteria. Thus the rst two reasons for feature #ii are reducible
to either nitude or normativity.
The third reason is because there are no ends to the causal chains that link
interacting open systems (p. 162). This is a separate issue where a planning
decision is envisaged as being applied in one system that is in mutual interaction with several other systems. For instance, a modication of the transport
system of a city, such as installing lights or a new bridge, interacts with economic decisions about costs of public versus private transport and with social
decisions about the safety and privacy of each. Rittel and Webber have in
mind that decisions within each of the latter, including responses to transport
design decisions, equally react back on the trac ows within the transport
system, and so on in a never-ending ow of mutual responses. In these circumstances, they conclude, decision consequences in any such system will lack
well-dened boundaries and so there will also be no well-dened solution
criteria for transport problems.12 For the same reason, various problems
have scopes that overlap, so that no one of them can be tackled without
aecting all the others. A changed transport design will alter business and leisure activities, socio-economic stratication and segregation, and thus the nature and distribution of medical demand and criminal activity, and so on.
This third reason comes down to the fact that planners, and designers, deal
with complex systems. Our ignorance of the complex causal chains in such systems makes it exceedingly dicult to arrive at optimal solutions whereby we
can judge that the problem has been solved and we can stop further investigation. But this feature is clearly shared with science. Science has been addressing
the issue of complex systems for many decades now; for example, climate scientists have developed sophisticated theories and methodologies that have
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vi. 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.
This feature of wickedness is just the issue of nitude discussed under feature
#i: . normally, in the pursuit of a wicked planning problem, a host of potential solutions arises; and another host is never thought up. It is then a matter of
judgement whether one should try to enlarge the available set or not. And it is,
of course, a matter of judgment which of these solutions should be pursued
and implemented. (p. 164)16 Just so. And exactly the same in science. Only
the puzzle-solving activities (Kuhns description) of a mature science will
look at all like Rittel and Webbers portrayal of scientic research, and then
only insofar as it is not disturbed by hidden errors or incompatibilities arising
externally. An immature science e that is, either a science in a new domain or
one newly emerging from a revolution in an old domain e will not have an
enumerable set of potential solutions to problems, for this is what makes a
discipline immature. Nor will there be a well-described set of permissible
methods, these too will be hotly debated in an immature science. Thus immature science will have the character that Rittel and Webber ascribe to social
planning. This feature of wickedness is wholly explainable in terms of condition one.
vii. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
But by essentially unique we mean that, despite long lists of similarities between a current problem and a previous one, there always might be an additional distinguishing property that is of overriding importance. (p. 164)
Noting that in science, including engineering, the ideal suggested by classes
of dierential equations is that of obtaining parametric characterisations of
classes of dynamics, Rittel and Webber point out that this becomes less
possible as complexity mounts. And we would add, especially in systems
whose behaviour is governed by many weak interactions rather than a few
strong ones and where there are many long-period, path-dependent processes
running. In the more complex world of social policy planning, every situation
is likely to be one-of-a-kind. If we are right about that, the direct transference
of the physical-science and engineering thought ways into social policy might
be dysfunctional, i.e. positively harmful. Solutions might be applied to
seemingly familiar problems which are quite incompatible with them. (p.
165) But while all this is true, the barriers should not be over-estimated; techniques of the sort used in geo-physics (see feature #v above) mean that many
component interactions can be successfully generalised, at least to some extent,
and general models of complex systems still oer general insight into characteristic kinds of dynamics with their concomitant shaping possibilities, e.g.
parametric shaping of a strange attractor despite the chaotic behaviour it supports, and so on.
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These issues are another aspect associated with complex systems. The important point for our purposes here is that, as under feature #ii, none of these considerations divides science from design: these issues are equally true of
modelling (science) as of shaping (design) any complex system. For instance,
modelling science faces the problem that for systems sensitive to conditions
it is always possible that hitherto weak interactions making little dierence
to overall system dynamics (and that might therefore be neglected to a good
approximation) can nonetheless, on entering a new sensitivity domain, become
a determining factor there. Making reasonable decisions as to what compromises adequate modelling and design for a partially unknown system is a
part of the critical discussion process underlying pursuit of promising problememethodesolution possibilities discussed under feature #i. Thus feature
#vii is reducible to conditions one and two.
viii. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another
problem.
Rittel and Webber contend that Removal of that cause [of the original problem] poses another problem of which the original problem is a symptom. (p.
165) This feature can be interpreted in two broad ways. Firstly, it could be interpreted as an unending progression, a progression that can be read either
horizontally or vertically. Reading it horizontally yields a regress of means
within method: a proposed solution to the initial problem (one that removes its
cause) involves bringing about condition X, as eliminating some form of crime
may in turn require providing police; but procuring X in turn requires bringing
about Y, as policing in turn has budgeting and planning consequences, and
procuring Y in turn ., and so on. This is true, but true in some degree of
any kind of problem, not just wicked ones. And certainly equally true of scientic problems. Understanding hot plasmas requires the capacities to create
and contain gases at a million degrees, and instruments to probe their interiors, but these in turn . Nor, if there were any qualms over claims the regress
is endless (which a reader may well have), would these qualms be any less
appropriate to science than to design. So this feature of wicked problems
will not divide science from design (or even wicked problems from most
others). It simply expresses another aspect of the nitude of any human situation (condition one).
Reading the progression vertically yields a regress of problems that become
ever more general. Returning to the crime example, eliminating some form
of crime may in turn be seen as part of a larger problem of alleviating poverty,
and this in turn seen as part of removing adverse living conditions, and so on.
This too is certainly a feature of practical design decisions e of any design decision in degree, wicked or not e and equally a feature of scientic investigations. Understanding hot plasmas requires understanding in turn how ionised
gases interact internally, but this in turn requires understanding how electrons
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and ions interact generally, and this in turn requires understanding how forces
behave at atomic scales and high temperatures, and in turn . In both the
crime and the plasma cases there are serious qualms over the claim that the
regress is endless, since in both cases we ascend in a few steps to very general
issues, beyond which further issues look more horizontally associated than
genuinely more generalised. Setting this aside, this vertical-regress feature of
wicked problems will also not divide science from design (or even wicked problems from most others). It simply expresses another aspect of the nitude of
any human situation (condition one).
However, Rittel and Webber do raise an interesting practical consequence of
the availability of several vertically ordered degrees of generality: which degree
of generality is best for formulating a given problem? . the higher the level of
a problems formulation, the broader and more general it becomes: and the
more dicult it becomes to do something about it. On the other hand, one
should not try to cure symptoms: and therefore one should try to settle the
problem on as high a level as possible. (p. 165) This seems right and, as Rittel
and Webber note, the issue is reinforced by the general unsatisfactoriness of
either extreme methodological policy: pursuing grandiose generalities (holism) is likely to be self-defeating unless and until large amounts of smallerscale knowledge have been accumulated, while pursuing only the smallest
detail (incrementalism) is equally likely to be self-defeating because ignored
higher-order processes may render the data insucient for problem solving.
However their claim that There is nothing like a natural level of a wicked
problem. (p. 165) does not follow. Only the wrongly implied arbitrariness
of these decisions could support that inference. As more becomes known
about the relevant interacting processes at various generalities and supersystems, decisions about what to include, and why, become sharper. Of course,
these issues are exactly the same whether it is explanation (science) or shaping
(design) that is involved and the preceding wording has been chosen to illustrate the point. Thus they too will not divide science from design (or even
wicked problems from most others), but again express another aspect of the
nitude of any human situation and the problems posed to problem-solving
by the interaction between our nitude and the complexity of the world.
The second broad interpretation follows from the following quote: Thus
crime in the streets can be considered as a symptom of general moral decay,
or permissiveness, or decient opportunity, or wealth, or poverty, or whatever
causal explanation you happen to like best. The level at which a problem is
settled depends upon the self-condence of the analyst and cannot be decided
on logical grounds. Here happen and like in explanation you happen to
like best implies that selection of explanations is arbitrary, whereas it is
not, though it may be characterised by ignorance, for either science or design.
However, looking past this loose language, Rittel and Webber could be
arguing that how we interpret a problem, and how it relates to other problems,
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method we would advocate, where strategies of all these kinds are of the
essence, and choices of which to pursue and when at the heart of pursuing
knowledge rationally.18
This phenomenon of hypothesis-testing and possible refutation avoidance is
therefore common to both design and science. Moreover, the ultimate source
of this phenomenon derives from both the cognitive nitude of human beings
and from resource nitude. We cannot, in science, perform all possible experiments, all at the same time, in order to clearly assign fault to one of the many
sub-systems potentially causing an unsuccessful experiment. Similarly, we
cannot, in design, implement all possible designs, all at the same time, in order
to see which one is optimal and which ones not.
However, as with many of their wickedness-making features, Rittel and Webbers claim can be interpreted in a dierent manner. Consider this quote: .
People choose those explanations which are most plausible to them. Somewhat
but not much exaggerated, you might say that everybody picks that explanation of a discrepancy which ts his intentions best and which conforms to the
action-prospects that are available to him. The analysts world view is the
strongest determining factor in explaining a discrepancy and, therefore, in
resolving a wicked problem. (p. 166) It is possible to read some of this passage
conservatively, e.g. it is reasonable to choose plausible and practically accessible alternatives to investigate. But tting intentions and world views are
clearly intended to suggest that explanations, and attempted avoidance of discrepancies to these explanations, are governed by normative principles that
cannot be brought into coherent structures, and dier widely in the community. Once again we have two interpretations of Rittel and Webbers text:
one, based upon nitude considerations (condition one) and the other focused
on normativity (condition three), and neither ultimately discriminating between design and science.
x. The planner has no right to be wrong.
Planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate; the effects can matter a great deal to those people that are touched by those actions. (p. 167) This wickedness-making feature is the only one of Rittel and
Webbers ten features that doesnt neatly t into our three conditions for wickedness. However, we do not think that this undermines our analysis and this
for three reasons. Firstly, the idea that a planner/designer has no right to be
wrong only reasonably stretches to mastery of current knowledge and skills:
why should we hold someone responsible for consequences of which they,
and everyone else, were ignorant? Moreover, it is exactly the same for scientists. A poorly constructed research programme wastes scarce resources,
may mislead scientists who rely on its data and conclusions, and its poor performance contributes to having its approach, or even the whole domain,
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are irrelevant to the issue of whether design and science share a core
cognitive process in common. It matters only that both processes take the
form of a strategic pursuit of value constrained by satisfying a collection
of norms.
Conclusion
This paper has focussed on the analysis of wickedness. What has been
learned is that design method, like scientic research method, is a product
of a common core cognitive process and management of pragmatic
complicating conditions, and that methodological procedures and skills
break into ways of progressing each of core and pragmatics and managing
their interactions. This structure can be exploited e for instance, by transfer of problem-solving experience and strategies, whether across subdomains within design or between science and design, despite pragmatic
dierences. This will, for example, facilitate (within limits) the abstraction
and transfer of engineering design theory and procedures, where well
structured characterisations of problems, procedures and pragmatics
have made possible sophisticated resolution structures, to other, more
pragmatically complicated elds.19 More generally it provides designers
a critical tool to widen their outlook and reect on their practices and provides a common framework within which to pose and test design research
issues.
Acknowledgements
The insightful and encouraging comments of two anonymous referees and a
journal associate editor are gratefully acknowledged as contributing to a clear,
balanced and well-focussed paper.
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Endnotes
1. In what follows all unattributed page references are to this paper.
2. Cross here employs one part of the Kuhnian terminology, puzzles, without
including the all-important complementary terminology, revolutions. This is
an oversight deriving from empiricist assumptions about scientic method
(see below) that persists despite a revolutionary tradition in design process extending from the early work of Schon (1963) (e.g. synthetic paintbrush) to
Crilly (2010).
3. The logic-machine conception of scientic problem solving has long been
known by scholars of science to have multiple defects. There have been
many attempts to patch it up but without success and it is reasonably assessed
as irretrievably awed. For a summary of arguments see Hooker (2010).
4. See, e.g., Buchanan (1992), Chapman (2010), Hussain and Ritchey (2011),
Rooksby et al. (2006), Whelton and Ballard (2002) and references.
5. For instance, Conklin (2005) proposes to encapsulate the original 10
wicked features in just 6 and Chapman (2010) in 5, while Love (2013)
characterises wickedness in terms of functional time constraints and the
like, but all use, rather than assess, the nature of their characterisation.
However, reection will show that their content can be subsumed under
our analysis here.
6. Kroes (2009), for example, additionally argues that (engineering) design i) has a
greater array of constraints, specically social constraints, than does science,
and ii) is primarily characterised as employing means-end reasoning rather
than the theoretical reasoning dominant in science. More detailed exposition
of our responses to these other arguments is pursued elsewhere as part of our
treatment of the roles of norms in the two domains see Farrell and Hooker
(2012b).
7. What Farrell and Hooker (2009) called exploring the methodological possibility space for the problem, speaking of science.
8. See, e.g., discussions and references in Cross (2006), Goel (1995), Lawson
(2005), Rittel (2010, 3.3) and Zeisel (2005). Within these cyclic processes there
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is scope for the use of themes, prototypes, sketches and correlative middlestage design tools that have been widely noted, for exploring within and across
options and for helping generate new options.
9. See Hooker (2010) for the radical consequences of nitude for method. See also
Caroline Whitbeck on the ethics of engineering design decisions, Whitbeck
(1996) and www.onlineethics.org.
10. See Rittel (2010, Fig. 3.3.1, p. 191). Rittel claims that the process through
which designers traverse this net of possibilities is beyond reason (p. 192).
However, examination of his discussion reveals that he assumes that reasoning
must be expressible as rules or equivalents that will ultimately permit its course
to be specied by algorithms, that is, the same formal reason that empiricism
assumes (among many). In the absence of such rules a-rational judgement formation simply replaces reasoning. But between the horns of his rational/arational dichotomy there lies non-formal rational judgement formation (see
e.g. Hooker, 2010).
11. This restores the role of Kuhnian revolutionary changes in science, to complement that of puzzle solving (cf. note 2). However, rather than there being a
puzzle/revolution dichotomy, as Kuhn conceived it, we conceive of it as a continuum in exactly the same manner as we do the tame/wicked distinction.
12. One suspects that Rittel and Webber assumed that in these circumstances no
solutions would ever have well- dened boundaries and solution criteria, but
this is not so. Provided that the eects and reactions across the interacting
systems damp out fast enough, or perhaps can be disentangled from others,
it will be possible to integrate their eects and then possible to provide solution criteria, e.g. in terms of permissible bounds on perturbation of system
parameters across all the interacting systems from integrated eects. But
Rittel and Webber would be right to claim that this is currently often not
possible.
13. For a detailed account of this in the case of ape language research see Farrell
and Hooker (2009). A classic example of this is the state of chemistry before
the chemical revolution of the late 1700s. Because there was no formal notion
of what might constitute an element, what might constitute a chemical reaction, what might constitute elemental purity, and so on, there was no
agreed-upon basis for fundamental advance in the eld. Everything about
the nature of matter was controversial; for example, the idea that mass could
be an indicator of elemental constitution, a lynchpin of modern chemistry, was
mired in controversy and many leading scientists argued that mass was
completely irrelevant for understanding chemistry. Correspondingly, designers
exploring design potential in an immature or radically altered setting, will not
have a mature design possibility space developed, so there wont be specic
design alternatives that can indicate clearly the strengths or limitations of
whole classes of designs (paradigm experiments), design changes may have unexpected consequences and the specicity or power with which two design
ideas are accepted as demonstrating dierences in design value for classes of
design will often have to be re-assessed.
14. Technically, their requirements as enunciated above are necessary but are not
sucient for what they intend. For that, the system state perturbed by each
trial has also to diverge suciently far and uniquely over time from that
with no trial intervention, otherwise the trials will eventually wash out,
despite irreversibility and temporally extended consequences.
15. They also apply to science itself in its historical development. For instance,
new observation and measurement technologies mostly grow out of new uses
for, and combinations of, old technologies that stretch their past capabilities,
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