To me, design is one of the most prevalent aspects of our daily lives, but also a very overlooked discipline. Indeed, design covers the four aspects that Buchanan pointed out, but if we really think about it, design covers almost all aspects of life. Design is defined as an intentional creation or plan of an object, activity, system, or process. This can be applied to almost anything, such as art, tools, education, schedules, etc. As intentional people, we are constantly designing, whether we realize it or not. It may be designing a piece of clothing or planning the day’s activities, but all of these actions require intentions to come about a specific outcome, which is what I believe design is. Design may be as intricate as planning the facade of Versailles or as simple as choosing how to draw a straight line, and is therefore practiced even when we do not realize while doing the simplest things. Many people regard design as only an art form, but is is ingrained in everyone’s daily life.
Because design is so versatile, it itself is a wicked problem. Designing for a large amount of people with different perspectives and preferences is never going to result in one single solution, because people are always changing and adapting in different ways with different needs. This is why people are never entirely satisfied with one single phone design or one kind of city plan. People are always changing, which is why design is always changing. Similarly, all wicked problems require design to come up with good solutions. From global warming to poverty, solutions need to be planned, practiced, and modified, all while using design to create the next best solution.
When looking at the visual illustration of design thinking and the map of design practice and design research, I couldn’t help but feel a little confused with how the information was presented. The double diamond illustration is effective in representing the idea of how design thinking cycles work, but the amount of text was a bit overwhelming for me to easily take in without having to really think it all over. There is not a super clear direction of where I should read with the arrows and all-over text. Possibly the complexity of the design is intentional to reflect how complex design thinking processes are, but as a reader trying to understand the illustration, another redesign may be useful to get the point across more efficiently. The design practice and research map was more understandable as I read the article, but I felt that it would have been useful to include a marker of time within the map, since the article is describing how the map has evolved as new design processes have come about. Additionally, I would have wanted to know what factors went into placing the bubbles on the map and deciding how large they should be on the axes.