Wicked Problems – Wicked Challenges

RELATED TERMS: Design of Narrative Environments; Global Challenges; Global Challenges – Learning; Methodology and Method; World

The underlying thesis that is at stake here is that the world, which is conceptualised as a complex narrative environment, a constructed model of reality, is enfolded in a number of wicked challenges, such as those discussed in the post Global Challenges. Design practices, given appropriately developed methodologies and research paradigms, are valid means for addressing but, crucially, not ‘solving’ these complex, inter-related challenges.

Richard Buchanan (1992) revived the discussion of wicked problems and the potential role of design in addressing them by combining the theories of Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber (1973) and Herbert Simon (1973, 1996) with the practice of Ezio Manzini (Gerber, 2018). Rittel and Webber called such problems ‘wicked’, not because they are themselves ethically deplorable but, “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 …).”

Wicked problems, then, are unique problems for which there is no definite formulation, as stakeholders cannot agree on a single definition; proposed solutions are not true-or-false but better or worse; and solutions are numerous and, when implemented, change the way to formulate the (ongoing) problem (Rittel and Webber 1973). In short, wicked problems are about people, vested interests and politics. (Ritchey 2013).

Dubberly and Pangaro (2015) note that, “wicked problems … are essentially political in nature and cannot be “solved” by experts,” while Silvio Lorusso (2023) states, “Every problem is a wicked problem: its resolution is temporary, its paradigm ever-shifting, its focus evolving.”

To cut a long story short, perhaps illegitimately: design is part of an ongoing political conversation about the values that are articulated in social practices that define social goals and which give rise to wicked challenges.

Design Practices and Wicked Challenges

Farrell and Hooker (2013) argue that design is not distinguished from science by characteristically being faced with wicked problems while science deals with ‘tame’ problems (‘puzzle solving’). Rather, they suggest, the features that Rittel and Weber hold to be characteristic of wicked problems derive from three general sources. These sources are common both to science and to design. They are:

• agent finitude, that is, capacity limitations, such as emergencies of time, cognitive limitations and so on;
• complexity, that is, uncertainty and irreversibility embedded in the complex-systems nature of the world; and
• normativity, referring to human values and norms (Pietrzyk, 2022). They play analogous roles in both science and design.

Furthermore, as Farrell and Hooker (2013) make clear, a challenge (or a ‘problem domain’) is neither all fully tame or all fully wicked. The tame/wicked distinction contains a number of different features each of which varies in its degree of tameness and wickedness across challenges.

References

Buchanan, R. (1992) Wicked problems thinking in design, Design Issues, 8 (2), p. Page 5-21. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511637 (Accessed: 2 May 2019).

Dubberly, H. and Pangaro, P. (2015) How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design, in Blauvelt, A. (ed.) Hippie modernism: the struggle for utopia. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, pp. 126–141.

Farrell, R. and Hooker, C. (2013) Design, science and wicked problems, Design Studies, 34(6), pp. 681–705. doi: 10.1016/j.destud.2013.05.001.

Gerber, N. (2018) A Critical review of design thinking. Medium. Available at https://medium.com/@niklausgerber/a-critical-review-of-design-thinking-44d8aed89e90 [Accessed 9 September 2021]

Lorusso, S. (2023) What design can’t do: essays on design and disillusion. Eindhoven, NL: Set Margins.

Manzini, E. (2015) Design, when everybody designs: An introduction to design for social innovation. Translated by R. Coad. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Pietrzyk, K. (2022) Wicked problems in architectural research: The Role of research by design, ARENA Journal of Architectural Research, 7(1), pp. 1–16. doi: 10.5334/ajar.296.

Ritchey, T. (2013) Wicked problems: Modelling social messes with morphological analysis, Acta Morphologica Generalis, 2(1), pp. 1–8.

Rittel, H. W. J. and Webber, M. M. (1973) Dilemmas in a general theory of planning, Policy Sciences, 4 (2), pp. 155–169. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4531523 (Accessed: 15 August 2021).

Simon, H. A. (1973) The structure of ill structured problems, Artificial Intelligence, 4(3–4), pp. 181–201. doi: 10.1016/0004-3702(73)90011-8.

Simon, H. (1996) The Sciences of the artificial. 3rd edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Further Reading

Crilly, N. (2025) Wicked problems: Flexible characterizations and visual representations, She Ji, 11(1), pp. 31–60. doi: 10.1016/j.sheji.2025.01.002.