Untangling Wicked Problems

Admin on 12/12/2020

More than 40 years after Rittel and Webber published the first articles on the theory of wicked problems this theory has been applied to a wide range of fields involved in real-world problem solving. Interest in the theory seems greater than ever. This has led to an interest in re-thinking the theory. A number of authors do this by imposing interpretations on the theory that are incompatible with each other and with the statements of the theory’s authors. We agree that it is time to critically re-examine the theory and rethink what implications it has for design. But rather than imposing an incompatible interpretation, our approach is see what new conclusions can be drawn from a systematic and critical examination of what Rittel and Webber actually said. This re-examination of their specific claims and arguments is what we call untangling wicked problems. From this untangling we derive new conclusions about how designers should tackle wicked problems and how design rationale can aid them in doing so.

Raymond McCall, Janet Burge

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c31c/894dcf93ef2826790db267070061670f77e1.pdf

Wicked Problems: Modelling Social Messes with Morphological Analysis

Admin on 12/12/2020

If you work in an organisation that deals with social, commercial or financial planning – or any type of public policy planning – then you’ve got wicked problems. You may not call them by this name, but you know what they are. They are those complex, ever changing societal and organisational planning problems that you haven’t been able to treat with much success, because they won’t keep still. They’re messy, devious, and they fight back when you try to deal with them. This paper describes the notion of wicked problems (WPs) as put forward by Rittel & Webber in their landmark article “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” (1973). It presents the ten criteria they use to characterise WPS, and describes how General Morphological Analysis (GMA) can be used to model and analyse such problem complexes.

Tom Ritchey

Wicked Problems: Modelling Social Messes with Morphological Analysis

Wicked Problems: Modelling Social Messes with Morphological Analysis

Admin on 12/12/2020

Wicked Problems: Modelling Social Messes with Morphological Analysis

If you work in an organisation that deals with social, commercial or financial planning – or any
type of public policy planning – then you’ve got wicked problems. You may not call them by this
name, but you know what they are. They are those complex, ever changing societal and organisational planning problems that you haven’t been able to treat with much success, because they won’t
keep still. They’re messy, devious, and they fight back when you try to deal with them. This paper
describes the notion of wicked problems (WPs) as put forward by Rittel & Webber in their landmark article “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” (1973). It presents the ten criteria they
use to characterise WPS, and describes how General Morphological Analysis (GMA) can be used to
model and analyse such problem complexes.

Click to access 00463519e5f08e672a000000.pdf

Wicked problems revisited

Admin on 12/12/2020

I revisit Rittel and Weber’s essay on the ‘wicked problem,’ and relate it to more recent theories about rationality and professionalism. Perhaps the most provocative challenge comes from Deleuze and Guattari’s difficult commentary on ‘the rhizome,’ which has currency within much design studio culture. I posit the controversial conclusion that ‘wickedness’ is not aberrant. It is formulations of professionalism which pay homage to the idea of formal rules, goal setting, and calculation as representing the norm of rationality, that present as deviations.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142694X04000626