Design is not an island

Every week or so I spend three hours standing in an 18^th century hall. No one has asked me to do this, not my university or the hall, which is the partner institution within my Collaborative Doctoral Award. And yet, I do this because it is an essential part of my research. It is essential because the central issue of my research project is looking to solve the problem of the so-called “deep dark secret of oral history;” the sad reality that oral history recordings rarely get used once archived (Frisch, 2008). My work is specifically looking at how oral history recordings can be reused on heritage sites. This is not an easy problem to solve, in fact it is not an easy problem to define. It is what is referred to in the design world as a “wicked problem”, an extremely complex and ever-changing problem, which can be viewed from different perspectives, conjuring up different solutions (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Buchanan, 1992). In design the defining of a wicked problem and the testing of solutions happens simultaneously (Buchanan, 1992; Bailey et al., 2019). During this process the designer, the one creating solutions, needs to be deeply reflective. In the context of this project I play the role of the designer. My PhD is a PhD by Practice and standing in a hall is part of my process to define the problem and find a solution to the issue of the limited reuse of oral history recordings. This but a brief explanation to why I am standing in a hall, so let us take a couple of steps back to fully unpack why I am doing a PhD by Practice. We must start by understanding what a “wicked problem” is and where it came from, then we can look at the methods used to define and solve these wicked problems.

The rise of the swampy lowlands

We start around the middle of the Cold War, where there a significant “anti-professionals” movement underway and the professionals in question are going through a crisis of confidence. The term “professionals” is used by Horst W. J. Rittel, who coined the term “wicked problem”, and the philosopher Donald A. Schön, who wrote The Reflective Practitioner, to refer to practice based subjects which often quite some form of formal training, such as lawyers, doctors, engineers, police, and teachers. (Schön, 2016, p. 3; Rittel and Webber, 1972, p. 155). Neither Rittel or Schön discuss designers specifically, however designers would fall under the same umbrella as many designers first go to design school before they moved into practice. It was these professionals, who were going through a crisis in confidence because it seemed they were struggling to solve many of society’s problems. Rittel and Webber list the various areas where the public were becoming dissatisfied with the professionals work such as; the education system, urban development, the police. The issue which comes up in both Rittel and Webber’s piece and Schön’s book is the Vietnam War which was as Schön describes “a professionally conceived and managed war [which] has been widely perceived as a national disaster.” (Schön, 2016, p. 4). All these events and issues demonstrated to the public how the actions of professionals can have negative and even devastating consequences for differents groups of people in different ways (Schön, 2016, p. 4). Both Rittel and Webber, and Schön attribute the negative consequences of professionals’ actions to a mismatch between the society’s problems and the professionals’ approach to solving these problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 156; Schön, 2016, p.14). In particular it was their nineteenth century “Newtonian” and “Positivists” approach to problem solving, which no longer seemed to work on these twentieth century problems. Their approach was distinctly linear; define problem and then solve it (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 156; Schön, 2016, p. 39; Buchanan, 1992, p. 15). And while this approach works well when solving a mathematical problem or deciding a move in chess, it does not work when solving complicated problems. For example with the Vietnam war this linear approach resulted in the problem being simplified into “stop the spread of Communism” and the solution being reduced to “fight war with communists using chemical weapons”. We all know this did not work and the Vietnam War went on to become one of the biggest disasters in American military history. The war and other events made people think the professionals were no longer suitable to solve society’s problems, however Rittel and Webber and Schön argue this was due to their linear approach to problem solving not their lack of knowledge.

Rittel and Webber seem to at first attribute failures of linear problem solving to problems like the Vietnam War being simply harder to solve than the “definable, understandable and consensual” problems the professionals were working with straight after the Second World War (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 156). This would imply the problems dealt with after the Second World War were simple, like a mathematical equation. Although possible, we must also consider how there instead was a shift in how we view of problems and the structure of society as a whole, especially when we contemplate how philosophical schools of thought, such as Post-structuralism, were being developed around the same as Rittel and Webber were writing. While neither Rittel and Webber or Schön make direct references to the Post-structulaist movement, there are parallels between Rittel and Webber’s ideas and language, and the ideas and language found in the literature of the Post-structuralist movement. For example, in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia published in 1980, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari they outlined the idea of rhizomatic thought, i.e. the idea that everything is connected through complex non-linear networks, rather than some form of linear hierarchy. Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the Rhizome, and Rittel and Webber’s idea of the “wicked problem” are both proposed in opposition to the more Positivists and Newtonian linear way of thinking about society (Buchanan, 1999, p. 15; Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 7). There are similarities in the language Rittel and Webber, and Schön used to describe these complex problems and the language Deleuze and Guattari used to communicate the nature of the Rhizome. For example, Rittel and Webber explain why they specifically use the term “wicked”:

We use the term “wicked” in a meaning akin to that of “malignant” (in contrast to “benign”) or “vicious” (like a circle) or “tricky” (like a leprechaun) or “aggressive” (like a lion, in contrast to the docility of a lamb). (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 160)

Along similar lines Schön refers to these problems as a “tangled web” or “a swampy lowland where situations are confusing “messes”” (Schön, 2016, p. 42). While Deleuze and Guattari write how “A rhizome [ceaselessly] establishes connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power, and circumstances” and talk about a rhizome’s complete lack of unity (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 8).

While conscious or not of the parallels between their ideas and the Post-Structuralist’s, it is Rittel and Webber, and Schön’s application of these Post-structuralist(-like) ideas which it useful to designers and other problem solvers, and became a corner stone idea of design thinking (Buchanan, 1992). They used the ideas of webs, networks and relationships to adjust two elements of problem solving: the overal aim of the process and the order in which things are done. Rittel and Webber, and Schön all write how within the old linear method of problem solving the main aim was to come up with a solution, and therefore less time was spent defining the problem. They wished to shift this focus to make the defining of the problem equal to (if not more important) than creating a solution (Schön, 2016, p. 40; Rittel and Webber, 1973). In addition, Rittel and Webber, and Schön all wished to abandon the idea of these linear steps in problem solving and instead have the problem definition and problem solution occur simultaneously, having each inform developments in the other (Buchanan, 1999. p. 15; Schön, 2016, p. 40). It is this latter change they propose which needs some further explanation to see why simultaneous problem definition and problem solution is vital to solving problems and untangling these wicked messes.

Understanding the web

Before we dive head first into simultaneous problem definition and problem solution we need to understand the structure of problems and why this makes them difficult to define. The wicked problem is one of many ways to describes complex problems, however there are other metaphors we can draw on. Near the end of the twentieth century you have the metaphor of “infrastructures” used by sociologist Susan Leigh Star to describe human relationships with technology and computer networks (Star, 1999), and designers have use the idea of designs living within wider eco systems to articulate the environmental impact of design products (Manzini and Cullars, 1992; Tonkinwise, 2014). All of these work as metaphors to help us understand the structure of the problems society is dealing with, and so to avoid confusion I will from now on just used the term “problem structure” and not wicked problem or rhizome or infrastructure or swampy mess. While problem structures are able to go by many names, there are four main traits problem structures have which are found across these different texts .

1. Problems are subjective

Since the linear format of problem solving spent little time on defining the problem/understanding the problem structure, it also did not consider the subjective nature of problem definition. The more Post-structulaist way of thinking about problems recognises how subjective our view of a problem structure can be (Rittel and Webber, 1972, p. 161). The problem structure is not a single person’s view on an issue but a collection of many people’s collective experience of an issue woven together into a web-like or, as Deleuze and Guattari would call it, rhizomatic structure. The sociologist Susan Leigh Star uses the example of a flight of stairs to illustrate the subjective nature of issues. A flight of stairs is to the majority of people a path from upstairs to downstairs or vice versa, however for a person in a wheelchair stairs are seen as as obstacle (Star, 1999, p. 380). You can expand this even further to cleaners finding stairs more difficult to clean than a flat surface or an architect wishing for a certain aesthetic style in the stairs or the builder who has to construct and later maintain the stairs or the person who has to source and pay for the materials used to make the stairs. Every single one of these views on stairs can be brought together to create the rhizomatic understanding of the stairs. By recognising the problem structure is made up of these subjective experiences the person tasked with problem solving is able to get a better understanding of the problem structure, ensuring they do not generate a solution based on a single narrative.

2. Problems are part of other problems

However, the borders of the problem structure do not end with people’s view and experience of the central issue you were looking at, as Rittel and Webber say “Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem”. Problem solving will start on one level, “crime on the street is a problem” and then move to higher levels, for example a general lack of opportunity, high poverty, or moral decay (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 165). This is similar to one of the properties of Leigh Star’s idea of infrastructure – “embeddedness,” which describes how an “infrastructure is sunk into and inside of other structures, social arrangements, and technologies” (Star, 1999, p. 381). A problem should therefore not be seen as an isolated issue but something connected and part of various other issues within wider society.

3. Problems are do not stand still

Problem structures are not static and will change over time. Deleuze and Guattari describe how “a rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines.” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p.10). Within the context of problem solving this shattering and restarting means a problem structure is always evolving, which in turn means a solution offered at one time may no longer be appropriate further down the line.

These first three traits of problem structures are why solving problems without proper problem definition can be destructive. To start with problem solving is already inherently a destructive act. The design theorist Cameron Tonkinwise explains how “innovation is itself a deliberate act of destroying some aspect of current existence” (Tonkinwise, 2014, p. 201). Through problem solving the current existence is remoulded, new things are added and other things are taken away until a new order of things has been achieved (Tonkinwise, 2014, p. 201; Papanek, 2020, p. 3). It is sometimes necessary to destroy things, but when this destruction does not take into consideration the wider problem structure of the central issue the destruction can have ripple effects across the entire structure. It is therefore essential to identify the structure you are creating in and knowing to some degree what effect any intervention might have across the entire structure. As Rittel and Webber say:

It becomes morally objectionable for the planner to treat a wicked problem as though it were a tame one, or to tame a wicked problem prematurely, or to refuse to recognize the inherent wickedness of social problems. (Rittel and Webber, 1972, p. 161)

The destructive nature of problem solving means one needs to be extremely cautious. Knowing exactly what to propose, create, or design is key and it depends on your knowledge of the problem. And this is where the fourth trait of problems comes in, and when things start to get very tricky. 

4. Problems are invisible

Parts of problem structures are invisible because they only become visible through some form of articulation. For example, with the first and second trait, problems are subjective and part of other problems, you are only able to see the parts of the problem structure you have researched through either observation or articulation from either yourself or someone else. If you do not talk to all the people involved there will be parts of the problem structure which is missing. Sometimes this is not you fault as Leigh Star points out centre topics “tend to be squirrelled away in semi-private settings” (Star, 1999, p. 378). Or you simple ran out of time, money, or patience before you could uncover the problem structure (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 162). When it comes to the third trait, problems do not stand still, there are parts of the problem’s network which do not yet exist and are therefore invisible.

There are also parts of the problem structure which are invisible unless under two circumstances, breakdown and probing. The first, Leigh Star lists as one of the properties of infrastructures, “invisible unless broken”. What Leigh Star specifically refers to here is types of maintenance structures, which society assumes will always work until they do not (Star, 1999, p. 382). Stephen Graham and Nigel Thrift in, Out of order: Understanding repair and maintenance, describe this phenomenon as follow:

The sudden absence of infrastructural flow creates visibility, just as the continued, normalized use of infrastructures creates a deep taken-for-grantedness and invisibility. (Graham and Thrift, 2007, p. 8)

Any breakdown of a problem structure could reveal elements of the structure which were previously invisible. The other circumstance when elements of the problem structure becomes visible is when is it probed. This specific action of probing in order to make visible is the main motivation to do problem definition and problem solution simultaneously (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 161). In their paper Rittel and Webber demostate this process on the “poverty problem”, where they first ask question “Does poverty mean low income?” and then work out what the determinants are for low-income through further questioning and answering (Rittel and Webber, 1972, p. 161). Every question is part of problem definition and every answer is part of problem solution, but both help build the problem structure. Each question is a probe which provokes an answer which makes visible more of the problem structure. Probes can take on different formats which I will expand on in the following section.

To summarise the four main traits of a problem structure are how it is: a collection of subjective narratives, connected to other problems, and always changing, and then an overarching fourth trait of general invisibility unless broken or probed. Recognising these four traits of a problem structure lays the foundation of simultaneous problem definiton and solution. can help in both problem definition and problem solution. The next step is to start building the problem structure and maybe find some .

The practical bit

Schön wanted to make clear the crisis in confidence professionals were experiencing during the Cold War and the anti-professional movement was due to the application of professional knowledge not the knowledge itself (Schön, 2016, p. 49). The linear method of problem solving did not allow for the complexity found in (modern) problem structures. However, Schön offers an alternative method which can handle the complexity of problem structures – “knowing-in-action.” Knowing-in-action is that tacit knowledge we gain from doing things and has the following properties:

• There are actions, recognitions, and judgements which we know how to carry out spontaneously; we do not have to think about them prior to or during their performance
• We are often unaware of having learned to do these things; we simply find ourselves doing them
• In some cases, we were once aware of the understandings which were subsequently internalised in our feeling for the stuff of action. In other cases, we may never have been aware of them. In both cases, however, we are usually unable to describe the knowing which our actions reveals (Schön, 2016, p. 54)

Schön backs this up it with the idea of common sense being the expression of “know-how,” specifically through action, “a tight-rope walker’s know-how, for example, lies in, and is revealed by, the way he takes his trip across the wire” (Schön, 2016, p. 50). Common sense also proves Schön’s second mode of thinking, “reflection-in-action.” While knowing-in-action is about doing, reflection-in-action is doing and thinking about it (Schön, 2016, p. 54). The example he uses is a study where children were asked to balance blocks which were unevenly weighted. The children knew how the balance point would likely be the visual centre. However, this knowledge failed them when balancing the unevenly weighted blocks. Eventually after trying and testing different balancing points on the blocks, the children understood the balancing point of the blocks was not always the visual centre, but depended of the weight distribution. They then starting weighing the blocks beforehand to feel how the weight is distributed and found the correct balancing point based off this knowledge (Schön, 2016, p. 57). So the children, without being taught, learnt the balancing point depends on weight distribution, and not the visual centre. Schön summarises the results of reflection-in-action as follows:

When someone reflects-in-action, he becomes a research in the practice context. He is not dependent on the categories of established theory and technique, but constructs a new theory of the unique case. (Schön, 2016, p. 68).

This creating a “new theory” for a “unique case” is exactly what simultaneous problem definition and problem solution is. Therefore the term “unique case” can easily be replaced by rhizome, wicked problem, or problem structure, each of which describe unique, ever-changing situations. If we look back at how Rittel and Webber described the process of simultaneous problem definition and problem solution through the example of the poverty problem, you can clearly see how reflection-in-action fits this process. It is a constant loop of testing theories and then returning to the drawing board and then back again – altering the theory and getting a better understanding of the case.

In addition to being a method of simultaneous problem definition and problem solving, reflection-in-action also creates good client relationships. A person who practices reflection-in-action or a reflective practitioner is meant to develop, according to Schön, a very different tone of relationship in comparison to a professional who describes themselves as an “expert” and uses the older linear method of problem solving. The main difference is how a reflective practitioner, although aware they have expert knowledge, also understands this knowledge makes up only part of the problem structure. The rest of the knowledge is found with their clients.^⁠1 The term client is used here to mean anyone who comes into contact with the problem and solution. For example within the context of the stairs the cleaner, non-disable user, disable user, builder, materials supplier should all be consider clients. The relationship the reflective practitioner has with their clients is also distinctively more open and honest than, what Schön refers to as, the “Expert”. Where the Reflective Practitioner drops the professional façade in order to create a more free, honest, and open relationship with their clients, including articulating their uncertainties, the Expert prefers to keep their uncertainties hidden, and have a professional distance between them and the clients, while also conveying “a feeling of warmth and sympathy as a “sweetener”” (Schön, 2016, p. 300). The good client relationship the Reflective Practitioner is able to nurture results in a richer exchange of information between the practitioner and the client. In addition the client is also more likely to accept and/or challenge the solutions the practitioner offers (Schön, 2016, p. 302). Both of these results are essential for simultaneous problem definition and problem solution, as you need information to uncover the problem structure, and also have permission to probe the problem structure with possible solutions.

So why are you standing in a hall?

I am standing in an 18^th century hall because the issue of the reusing of oral history recordings, especially the reuse of recordings on heritage sites, is a very complex or wicked problem. It is rhizomatic, made up of many peoples subjective view on the issue of handing and reusing oral history recordings, such as the original interviewers, the archivists, the site’s volunteers, and the site’s staff. It is entwined into other issues, for example digital obsolescence, data management, the environmental impact of digital files, and how we value within heritage. It is also constantly moving and changing as I am researching, because it is part of an operating organisation. There are also many parts which are still invisible to me because their access is restricted in some way, again due to me working with an operating organisation. Above all a lot of what I am researching falls under maintenance work, the system which Susan Leigh Star identified as being intrinsically invisible. Because the issue of reusing oral history recordings has all the elements of a complicated problem structure, I cannot solve the problem through the linear method and have to use the techniques of Rittel and Webber discuss and become a Reflective Practitioner practicing reflection-in-action. This action has lead me to standing in the hall, because I started volunteering at the hall and also did a placement at the hall, both of which allowed me to understand numerous things about the problem structure. For example, how staff members can be suddenly assigned carpark duty and have to leave all the work they planned to do that day by the wayside, or the complicated and delicate power dynamics between the volunteers and the staff, or simply how the IT systems work, or do not work. If I was not doing a PhD by Practice it would be unlikely I would have known these things about the problem I am trying to find a solution for. And as so many I have mentioned point out developing a solution when you do not know the problem can be considered unethical.

¹ Schön does specify “stakeholders” and “constituents” are used instead of “client” when dealing with multiple groups (Schön, 2016, p. 291). However, I prefer the term client because I feel it communicates the power structure of the relationship better: I am the designer/problem solving serving my clients. I am working for them, they are not working or me.