Wicked Problems in Design Thinking

This widely cited article by Richard Buchanan argues that design thinking functions as a new liberal art, a mode of integrative thinking that designers apply across four broad areas of contemporary life: symbols and communications, material objects, actions and services, and complex systems and environments. Buchanan distinguishes between fixed "categories," which carry settled meanings within an existing theory, and flexible "placements," which orient thinking without rigidly determining it; treating a placement as though it were a fixed category, he argues, produces derivative work rather than solutions suited to genuinely new situations. Central to the article is the idea of "wicked problems": design problems that are indeterminate, lack fixed conditions or limits, and are bound up with the particular social realities of the people involved, which is why Buchanan holds that design problems resist the fixed, linear problem-solving methods used in the sciences. Credits: Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues, 8(2), 5-21.