The readings for this week gives us a definition of what design is, what are some categories of designing, and a conventional approach to design.
Firstly, in “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking”, the author gave us a very broad overview of what design is, including how the notion of design evolved in history and what are some general focus and concerns of designing and designers. The most interesting point of this article is where the author suggests that design is actually a typical “wicked problem”, which means that there is not defined definition, formulation, solution or even an endpoint of any design problem. This brought us a question that is, how indeed should we approach such a problem.
So, in “An Evolving Map of Design Practice and Design Research“, a map of different aspects of design is given. This map categorizes design problems with four dimensions. Namely, whether it is research-led, or it is design-led, and whether it takes an expert mindset, or a participatory mindset. Then, the author placed different kinds of design and design research on the map, which shows the emphasis of each of them.
Finally, in “Visualizing the 4 Essentials of Design Thinking”, a general way of design is given. The essential idea is that we should first find all the possibilities and then focus on the most essential one both in terms of identifying the problem and finding the solution. And because designing is a wicked problem, we should iterate through this chain again and again. However, a question arises that since in the design map, there are many different areas of designing, would this “two-diamond” approach apply to all?