Priscila Lena Farias / Anna Calvera Marcos da Costa ... - Blucher

(not)Solving (non)problems: Design contributions to Education in a complex world
“non-complex” state (Ardoino in Morin, 2001: 550). This impossibility
incurs in the emergence of aspects that were considered
antagonistic before, and now have to be thought together.
The current model of Education is still based on principles that
favor a culture of denial of paradoxes, conflicts and uncertainties
that are intrinsic to reality. It separates what is connected,
it unifies what is multiple, and eliminates anything that brings
disorders or contradictions to our understanding, portraying living
and social phenomena as results of linear causality (Morin
2009: 18). In this context, the different understandings held in
general Education on the idea of problem solving can either be
related to a “complex” or a “complicated” view of the world and of
the problems students are encouraged to solve.
2. Problem-solving and complexity in Design
In the field of Design, formulations on the concept of problem
solving are intimately related to epistemological and methodological
discussions that in the last 40 years have been changing
understandings in the area. Since Herbert Simon emblematized
Design as devising ‘courses of action aimed at changing existing
situations into preferred ones’ (1984: 129) in the 1969 book,
The Sciences of the Artificial, which is an analogous description
to the one used in Cognitive Psychology to characterize problem
solving, many talk about Design as a problem solving process.
Nevertheless, it seems that after Simon, efforts from different
authors in the field have been towards comprehending the singularities
of this process in the concrete activity of designers,
questioning the concepts of “problem” and “solution”, as well as
the path from one to the other.
The distinction made by Rittel & Webber (1973) that Design
problems are wicked, instead of tame like the ones scientists
deal with, was the first landmark in this trajectory of questioning,
as it contested the growing tendencies to rationalize Design
methodology strengthened by the Design Methods Movement
of the 1960’s. The authors sustained that, in Design, problems
are ill-defined and they are never solved in a definite way. One
cannot first understand the problem and then search for a solution.
Defining and solving the problem are parts of the same
interdependent process where the formulation of the problem is
the problem (Rittel & Webber 1973: 162). The idea that designers
deal with wicked problems became one of the “canons” of
the field, and its acceptance was later reinvigorated by the article
Wicked Problems in Design Thinking (1992) in which Richard
Buchanan associates it to the indetermined (not undetermined)
nature of the subject matter of Design (1992: 16-7).
A deeper questioning on the matter of problem solving was put
forward in the 1980’s by Donald Schön (2000), who observed
the practice and the teaching of Design in order to elaborate a
perspective on educating “reflective professionals”, the ones
that are able to deal with unexpected, conflicting and unique aspects
of real-life situations. The author proposed an “epistemology
of practice”, putting trust in the tacit knowledge that emerge
in these instable moments, and the replacement of the ideas of
“problem” and “solution” for “situation” and “construction”, based
on an internal coherence that is subject to constant revisions
according to the dialogue that is developed during the action.
Schön’s concept of “reflective practice” is influential in many
fields, and in Design, his formulations can be understood as a
better succeeded move from an objectivist view, in which ‘the distinction
between the methodological and epistemological realms
is no longer necessary or even relevant’ (Findeli 2001: 10).
More recently, approaches from Richard Coyne (2005) and Alain
Findeli (2001) update the comprehension of problem solving in
a way that is more adjusted to the paradigm of complexity described
by Morin, Perrenoud and Ardoino. Coyne revisits Rittel &
Webber’s article and argues that there aren’t two kinds of problems,
but that all problems can be considered wicked. According
to the author, the understanding of some problems as tame is
‘incidental to the entire context of motivations, commitments,
and proclivities’ (Coyne 2005: 8) by which solutions are socially
decided and rules are conventionalized and adopted. The welldefined
problems would be versions of diminished “wickedness”,
applicable to contexts in which we sometimes choose to make up
formulations in terms of goals and constraints (2005: 8-9).
This notion is similar to Ardoino’s (in Morin 2001: 551), when he
says that a dichotomy in universe between simple and complex
things seems unlikely. To him, conceptions and representations
are properties lent to the objects by us, and therefore it would be
more accurate to say that what exist are data and ideas that we
elaborate regarding these objects, which means that we should
reflect upon the subjects’ perspective instead of on the object
itself. The world observed through its regularities can be simple,
but dealing with complexity presupposes being able to apprehend
the heterogeneous scenario and to maintain perspectives that
normally would be considered antagonistic together. Thus, some
people would be more inclined to deal with problems observing its
complexity, and others to surround themselves with constraints
and specific methods. In this sense, Design can be identified as
a favorable field to the construction of perspectives that are able
to observe and value conflicting aspects of different situations,
while other professional or scientific areas that still work with deterministic
conceptions can be considered unfavorable.
Alain Findeli (2001), for his part, proposes a ‘new logical structure
of the design process’ (2001: 10) in which he substitutes
the words “problem” and “solution” by states “A” and “B” of the
same system:
The designer’s task is to understand the dynamic morphology
of the system, its “intelligence.” One cannot act upon a system,
only within a system; one cannot act against the “intelligence” of
a system, only encourage or discourage a system to keep going
its own way; state B of the system is, among various possibilities,
the one favored by the designer and the client according to their
general set of values; state B is only a transitory, more or less
stable, state within a dynamic process, never a solution; the
production of a material object is not the only way to transform
state A into state B; and since the designer and the user also are
also involved in the process, they end up being transformed, too,
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies 79