Design Thinking is the Heart of Technological Innovation

As humans continue to build an increasingly enormous technological civilization, the products that we use and the computerized systems that we engage with will require significant considerations when designing them.

When you go online to read your favorite blog or browse through Medium’s home page or open up Instagram’s explore page, you are interacting not only with the system, but you are also being exposed to the different values inherent — deliberate or not — within the system that were created by another human being.

As social creatures, our experiences can be significantly shaped not just by technologies in the material sense, but also by the type of experimental thinking, as described by Buchanan in his article The Wicked Problem in Design Thinking, that is done by designers, who are also members of the human community.

In the following article, I will explore the “wicked problem” of human-computer-interactions and how an integrated approach of design thinking can reveal a solution to that problem. As a result, the discussion will give a better understanding of computerization as a social phenomenon.

In Buchanan’s article, he calls upon the necessity of design thinking as a way to communicate and argue for solutions to “wicked problems.” These types of problems are indeterminate, meaning that they do not have definitive conditions or limits.

The subject matter designers deal with are quasi-subject matter, which “tenuously exist within the problems and issues of specific circumstances.”

To be clearer, they are in contrast to the determinate problems for science, which focuses on understanding the laws and rules inherent in existing subject matter.

The task and problem of designers is to conceive and plan for what does not yet exist.

What makes design problems so “wicked” is that they are a class of social system problems which are a mixture of different problems on many different levels wherein the clients and decision makers also have conflicting values, and information is just plain confusing.

The task and problem of designers is to conceive and plan for what does not yet exist within conditions that are a mess of various problems on various levels of the human experience.

In William Odom’s article, Values, Design, and Worthwhile Relationships, it is immediately apparent that human values are a main source of wicked problems in designing human-computer-interaction systems or products.

Because technological products and systems are so intertwined with our modern lifestyles, the values that they carry explicitly and implicitly have the ability to influence our very experience of life itself.

Odom cautions that the efficiency and functionality that products are created for may idealize a lifestyle of efficient work and mindless pleasure. We must “critically consider underlying values engrained in and projected through technologies that populate contexts of everyday life.” Both Buchanan and Odom stress the importance of design thinking in tackling wicked problems and minimizing the chances of making even more problems.

Summarizing the goal of social computing in an interview for the Interaction Design Foundation, Tom Erickson, an interactive designer and researcher, asks, “What do you have to provide to make a particular type of interaction possible?”

Diversity is very important in the field of interactive design and designers need to have different lenses in mind to get out of their own cultural frame.

For designers in social computing, their main goal is to create an online system that supports social behavior among people within the system, and then make use of that system for various purposes. This is a wicked problem because, in answering this, designers need to come up with a plan that takes into a multitude of considerations for making a product that is useful.

Value is intrinsic to a product or system’s usefulness. If it has no value to anyone, it is essentially useless. How an online social system is designed will either spark people to self-organize or fragment organization (Erickson).

Because problems can occur on every level, from the cognitive to social to cultural and ecological, Erickson emphasizes that diversity is very important in the field of interactive design, and designers need to have different lenses in mind to get out of their own cultural frame.

This goes hand-in-hand with Buchanan’s concept of having placements rather than categories for designers. A designer’s style is basically his or her personal preference for certain types of visual forms, materials, or techniques; “a way of seeing possibilities through conceptual placements.”

When these placements become categories, they become fixed and “result in mannered imitations of an earlier invention that are no longer relevant to the discovery of specific possibilities in a new situation.”

In other words, the designer forces ideas or their own values onto a situation rather than working with the situation to come up with innovative solutions that are of use to their client and target audience, if not everyone. Buchanan’s placements are just another way of iterating Erickson’s notion of having a diverse set of frames when considering solutions for wicked problems.

Looking at the different areas of design, especially in symbolic and visual communications and complex systems or environments for living, working, playing and learning, the significance of design thinking for social computing and human-computer-interactions comes into play.

This process of designing is technology.

First, let us view technology more as an art of experimental thinking rather than just the artifacts or products themselves. Rather than just thinking about the computer or online dating website, think about the designing, the planning, and the different levels of intellectual consideration that went into these products.

This process of designing is technology; it is a systematic discipline, an “argument, reflecting the deliberations of designers and their efforts to integrate knowledge in new ways, suited to specific circumstances and needs” (Buchanan).

Our interactions with each other are increasingly computerized, such as in online cafés, forums, blogs, social networking sites, and virtual worlds. These complex systems and environments allow for a space of interaction. What is interesting to designers is how to create a computerized environment that encourages user engagement, involving the use of visual and symbolic mechanisms.

One way is to create a culturally sustainable system that involves transparency and engagement. Transparency is achieved when the functionality of the system is understandable and accessible, and engagement is achieved when the product is dependent on human operation. These are culturally sustainable because they have inherent values of user autonomy, freedom from bias, and self-determination (Odom).

Designers of social computing systems aim to engage users and encourage interaction and certain social behavior. The heart of wicked problems in social computing design and the solutions are essentially a social phenomenon because they arise out of the diverse range of human values and ever-changing contexts of our social life.

The very goal of computerization is to increase the quality of the human experience.

Because humans are social creatures and visual creatures, the design of computerized systems has great impact on our experiences. From the way that a website is displayed to the functioning of the system to the people that it reaches, computerization of social interaction has created new ways of interacting and increased our diverse range of social behavior.

Whether these systems encourage positive or negative social behavior depends greatly on the frameworks of the designers. The very goal of computerization is to increase the quality of the human experience.

Designers are humans who enjoy creating and solving problems, and want to create for the millions of other humans on the web. Great systems will be free from bias and cultivate positive social interactions, whether it be fair auctioning, having stimulating intellectual discussions, connecting like-minded people, or just having fun.

These systems will need to be transparent and engaging, which create important human values of autonomy, self-determination, and stimulation.

We want users to be more human and perhaps be designers themselves.

To create a great system, designers will encounter countless wicked problems. However, with design thinking, collaboration, and the different lenses of each individual, the solutions and possibilities will be endless.