Abstract

Contemporary design thinking is often described as a designerly approach to dealing with wicked problems – problems that are too complex and deemed impossible to fix, but that can be tamed and solved with proper design methods. Wickedness is a fundamental justification for designing things as a leap of faith or even as a kind of magic. This practice-based design research questions this justification while also opening up new understandings of wickedness. By creating a Forum Theatre session with characters inspired by the musical Wicked as allegories for different design agents/subjects in an online event, the authors engaged design spectators in critical thinking of their own roles and practices from a broader social and political perspective. We conclude that wickedness is not necessarily a nasty quality of design problems and solutions but a relational quality that can be explored by anti-oppressive approaches to design thinking and design doing.

Keywords

design thinking, wicked problems, wickedness, theatre of the oppressed.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Conference Track

Research Paper

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Jun 25th, 9:00 AM

Coming to terms with design wickedness: Reflections from a forum theatre on design thinking

Contemporary design thinking is often described as a designerly approach to dealing with wicked problems – problems that are too complex and deemed impossible to fix, but that can be tamed and solved with proper design methods. Wickedness is a fundamental justification for designing things as a leap of faith or even as a kind of magic. This practice-based design research questions this justification while also opening up new understandings of wickedness. By creating a Forum Theatre session with characters inspired by the musical Wicked as allegories for different design agents/subjects in an online event, the authors engaged design spectators in critical thinking of their own roles and practices from a broader social and political perspective. We conclude that wickedness is not necessarily a nasty quality of design problems and solutions but a relational quality that can be explored by anti-oppressive approaches to design thinking and design doing.

 

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