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What Are Wicked Problems and How Might We Solve Them?

by Euphemia Wong | | 34 min read
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Have you ever come across a problem so complex that you struggled to know where to start? Then you might have stumbled upon a wicked problem. While wicked problems may not have a definite solution, there are certainly things you can do to mitigate any negative effects. When you learn how to tackle wicked problems, you learn how to improve the world and the lives of the people who live in it. Here, you’ll learn the ten characteristics of a wicked problem and five steps to tackle wicked problems.

Table of contents
  1. What Is a Wicked Problem?
  2. What is the Difference between Puzzles, Problems and Wicked Problems?
  3. Which Wicked Problems Do We Need to Deal with?
  4. 10 Characteristics of a Wicked Problem
  5. From Wicked Problems to Complex Socio-Technical Systems
  6. Wicked Problems and Design Thinking
  7. A Combination of Systems Thinking and Agile Methodology Can Help You Tackle Wicked Problems
  8. 5 Ways to Apply Systems Thinking and Agile Methodology in Your Work
  9. The Take Away
  10. References & Where To Learn More
  11. Images

What Is a Wicked Problem?

A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that’s difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. Wicked problems lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.

Classic examples of wicked problems are these:

  • Poverty

  • Climate change

  • Education

  • Homelessness

  • Sustainability

What is the Difference between Puzzles, Problems and Wicked Problems?

Let’s create an overview by first looking into the difference between a puzzle and a problem, and then afterwards we’ll examine wicked problems.

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    One thing in relation to this that I want to talk about is the difference between *puzzles* and *problems*. I think if you've been practicing it for a while doing real design, you'll understand this difference without thinking about it. If you're perhaps newer, perhaps you've done a university course and you're newer at that, it might be less obvious. Let's start with puzzles.

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:01:01

    The thing about puzzles is they have a *single right solution*. The same is true of exam questions. Exam questions are puzzles. They might say, "This is a problem," but they're puzzles. There's one right solution, and in fact I get annoyed if I do the newspaper puzzle and I realize there was a couple of right solutions. I expect there to be *one*. But certainly, there is a right solution. And what you're presented with in a puzzle is you have only and all of the relevant information. Indeed, one of the ways if you're doing an exam question

  3. 00:01:01 --> 00:01:33

    to actually work out "Am I on the right track?" — you can say: "Have I used all the information?" You get the same with a whodunit book. You know, you open the book, the detective book. When there's something in there, you think: "The author's put that there for a reason. That's probably part— It might be there to mislead you. But it's either *deliberately misleading* or it's actually crucial. The other thing about problems and puzzles is that the solution is *fixed* – as in, you can't change the problem.

  4. 00:01:33 --> 00:02:00

    So – I mean, you *can*: I can pick up my newspaper and I can just color in the squares in the sudoku rather than solving them. But that's not the idea of it. And if you do that in an exam, you'd probably get no marks. A few philosophy — you know, there are these stories about the philosophy questions, like: The question says, "Is this a good question?" and the student says, "If this is a good answer!" I don't know if anybody really got top marks in philosophy for doing that sort of question!

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:31

    But – on the whole – if you've got a puzzle, you have to do what the puzzle says. *Real-world problems* are not like that. Real-world problems may have many, many solutions, or they may be actually *insoluble* in the way you first approach them. You may not have all the information you need. And you've probably got lots of information available that's totally superfluous, that doesn't help you. So, often part of problem-solving is *finding that information*.

  6. 00:02:31 --> 00:03:00

    But actually, the problem might be insoluble; so, partly, problem-solving is about *negotiating* and working out what *is* doable and perhaps negotiating and a reformulation of the problem that is one that's both doable and solves the problem. So, it's about *redefining* it and it's about *understanding* it again. And the two kinds of things – puzzles and problems – have different ways of addressing them.

  7. 00:03:00 --> 00:03:32

    So, things you've learned about puzzle-solving don't always help you with problem-solving. So, I mentioned a classic heuristic – an exam – is "Have I used all the information?" Of course, that doesn't help in actual life. Part of the reason I was talking about that is that this redefinition of problems, of *understanding* a problem is often the first stage to find a solution. Indeed, I often find – and you've probably found this yourself – if you really, really understand a problem well,

  8. 00:03:32 --> 00:04:00

    often solutions are obvious. I mean, sometimes they are really hard! But often, once you've really got to the nub of "What's really going on with that? *Why* is that difficult?", "Aha!" — and you get to solve it. So, often the solution is trivial if you understand the problem. But how do you get to understand the problem? You might have a very abstract way of approaching it, but often the way we understand things is through concrete instances.

  9. 00:04:00 --> 00:04:32

    You actually want solutions – you want things that are solid and down-to-the-ground in order to look at them, make sense of them and then understand the problem better. But how do you *get* those concrete solutions if you don't understand the problem? So, actually understanding the problem is as important as solving the problem. There's this quote – you might have come across some variant of this – and I'm just going to give one variant that says: "If I had an hour to solve a problem

  10. 00:04:32 --> 00:05:01

    I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions." Now, this is often attributed to Albert Einstein. And it's actually the sort of thing you could imagine him saying. But, actually, the evidence is that he never said it at all. It's just one of those sayings that seems reasonable, and it gets attributed to other people as well. However, even though he didn't say it, it is true and I'm sure it's something that he would have espoused as well.

  11. 00:05:01 --> 00:05:32

    Spending time really understanding the problem often is the first stage to solving it. Once you really understand the problem, sometimes – and very often – solutions find their way out. Some years ago, I did a walk around the perimeter of Wales – about a 1000-mile walk. And there were some things that I was interested in from a research point of view: How to deal with issues when you have low connectivity in terms of mobile signal and things.

  12. 00:05:32 --> 00:06:00

    But part of it was about *learning questions*. And the way I often phrased it to people before I did it was: You know, if I've just got a problem, I can probably find a solution. But actually knowing *what are the important questions* were part of what I was doing. So, for instance, I came away with questions about the nature of community when industry died in areas. And you could observe — in some areas, the community seemed to collapse; in others, it seemed to be resilient – and trying to *then*

  13. 00:06:00 --> 00:06:33

    answer that question or seek more understanding of what it was with the factors that made that difference. Wicked problems have properties. It's a whole list of properties; I've got some of them here. One of them is about *being unique* – that it doesn't mean you can't learn from previous ones, but you can't just take the solution you had for a previous problem and apply it to new ones. For wicked problems, each one you have to look at *individually*. There's *no definitive formulation* – that is actually even stating what the problem is is problematic.

  14. 00:06:33 --> 00:07:01

    *Non-enumerable* – you can't just go through a set of things and say, "Which one of these is better?" The space of potential ways you might tackle it is unbounded. So, you can't just sort of try the first idea, try the second idea. You've got to go beyond that. They talk about *one-shot operation* – and this is about the fact that often you have to start executing the solution before you know what it all is. So, imagine you're in a desert and you've only got a certain amount of water

  15. 00:07:01 --> 00:07:33

    and you don't know which way to go, and you spot a very high dune. What you might do is walk to the dune in order to spy the land. But in walking to the dune – if it was a long way away – you of course have used up some of your water; you've got hot and you've used up some of your food; you've *committed* yourself. And real problems are often like that. *No stopping rule* – You know: Have you finished? And that's related to the fact that often in the real world you don't just say, like with a candle – and you get to this and you say,

  16. 00:07:33 --> 00:08:04

    "Yes, I've done it. I've got a solution that works – done!" In the real world, there isn't a fixed solution – or the dots – I say: "Yes, I've got a solution, with four lines that go to a dot." You can't just say, "I've done it!", because – actually – you tend to have things that are better or worse solutions, rather than the perfect solution, the right solution, versus another solution. And so, you're probably not trying to solve the economy. But these kinds of characteristics you actually will find in a lot of real design problems.

  17. 00:08:04 --> 00:08:13

    So, they are difficult – and that's why you need to think creatively. But you're not unique in having to solve some of these issues.

Which Wicked Problems Do We Need to Deal with?

Many of the design problems we face are wicked problems, where clarifying the problem is often as big a task as solving it… or perhaps even bigger. Wicked problems are problems with many interdependent factors making them seem impossible to solve as there is no definitive formula for a wicked problem.

A wicked problem is often a social or cultural problem. For example, how would you try to solve global issues such as poverty… or education? What about climate change, and access to clean drinking water? It’s hard to know where to begin, right? That’s because they’re all wicked problems.

What makes them even worse is the way they’re intertwined with one another. If you try to address an element of one problem, you’ll likely cause unexpected consequences in another. No wonder they’re wicked! It’s clear to see that standard problem-solving techniques just aren’t going to cut it when you’ve got a wicked problem on your hands.

You’ll need to gain a much deeper insight into the people involved and learn how to reframe the problem entirely if you want to have any sort of chance at coming up with a valuable solution.

10 Characteristics of a Wicked Problem

As you can see, we need to dig deeper to understand the essence of wicked problems. Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, professors of design and urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, first coined the term wicked problem in “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” (1973). In the paper, they detail ten important characteristics that describe a wicked problem:

  1. There is no definitive formula for a wicked problem.

  2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule—there’s no way to know whether your solution is final.

  3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false (right or wrong); they can only be good or bad.

  4. You cannot immediately test a solution to a wicked problem.

  5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation” because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error—every attempt counts significantly.

  6. Wicked problems do not have a set number of potential solutions.

  7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.

  8. Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.

  9. There is always more than one explanation for a wicked problem because the explanations vary greatly depending on the individual’s perspective.

  10. The planner/designer has no right to be wrong and must be fully responsible for their actions.

We still face the classic wicked problems in today’s world; however, there are further examples we now have to consider. Business strategy, for example, is now often classed as a wicked problem because strategy-related issues normally meet at least five of the characteristics listed above.

From Wicked Problems to Complex Socio-Technical Systems

The rapid technological advancement of the 21st century has, in many ways, mutated wicked problems. In today’s hyperconnected world, it is difficult to look at problems in isolation.

Let’s look at sustainability, for example. Recycling is often considered as one of the solutions to achieve sustainability. Don Norman, in his two-part essay for FastCompany, examined recycling and remarked: “I am an expert on complex design systems. Even I can’t figure out recycling.”

He describes in detail how difficult it is for people to send their household waste to get recycled. There are different rules for different materials—paper, plastics, glass, metals. And within a category, say, plastic, there are different rules for different types of plastic in different places. Not all plastics can be recycled. Those that can be recycled, demand specialized equipment and processes that are not universally available.

“Recycling is a poor solution to the wrong problem.”

— Don Norman

The complexity of recycling is a problem. But why do we need to recycle at all?

It's because most of the products we use in our lives are made from non-reusable materials. Consider smartphones—most, if not all, have batteries that cannot be separated from the device. If your battery no longer functions as intended, you must replace it with a new phone.

What if the iPhone had a removable battery, which could be fixed or replaced so that you didn’t have to throw out the entire phone, if (when) the battery died? What if phones weren’t built to crack or become obsolete within a short time?

What if companies considered alternate materials to manufacture phones, or government legislation made it mandatory for companies to take back all their material, and put them back into the manufacturing process? The piles of garbage on the planet are a part of what Don Norman calls complex socio-technical systems. Let’s hear more on this from Don Norman:

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:31

    I talk a lot about complex socio-technical systems. And sometimes people ask me, "Well, why – is that different than a wicked problem?" We don't use the word "wicked problem", because it's used too much and it has too many different meanings. And so, that's why we avoid that term. And it kind of is the same thing. The term "wicked problems" was invented some time ago,

  2. 00:00:31 --> 00:01:00

    and it refers to problems of the nature that well, sometimes it's even hard to define the problem. And it's hard to define the solution. And when you work on a wicked problem like world peace, how do you even know when you've succeeded? Because you may succeed for... there's peace for two years, and then it breaks out again. So, was that a success or not? So, wicked problems are these really difficult issues that are difficult to define, that are indeed complex systems,

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:31

    that are indeed complex socio-technical systems, difficult to define, difficult to know how to approach, difficult to even know whether you've been successful. And, yeah, the ones I'm looking at are wicked complex social-technical problems. So, but don't give up hope, because we can never solve some of these major problems, but, however, we can make things better. We can make improvements. And that's often all that we can do,

  4. 00:01:31 --> 00:01:47

    but if we're continually making improvements and enhancements and making people's lives better across all of the world, I consider that a success. It means we're never finished, but I consider that a success, and that's what you have to do with wicked problems.

Wicked problems, or as Don Norman prefers to call them, complex socio-technical systems, are not isolated. They are intertwined in existing systems—manufacturing systems and economic systems, political, social and cultural systems, technological and legal systems. And each of those systems is connected with the other.

So, how can you start to tackle wicked problems, both old and new? Let’s look at how design thinking—more specifically, systems thinking and agile methodology—can help us start to untangle the web of a complex socio-technical system.

Wicked Problems and Design Thinking

The design theorist and academic Richard Buchanan connected design thinking to the innovation necessary to begin tackling wicked problems. Originally used in the context of social planning, the term “wicked problems” had been popularized in the paper “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking” (1992) by Buchanan. Various thought leaders following Buchanan continued on to suggest we utilize systems thinking when faced with complex design problems, but what does that look like in practice for a designer tackling a wicked problem and how can we integrate it with a collaborative agile methodology?

A Combination of Systems Thinking and Agile Methodology Can Help You Tackle Wicked Problems

Design thinkers proceeded to highlight how we utilize systems thinking when faced with complex design problems.

  • Systems thinking is the process of understanding how components of a system influence each other as well as other systems—and therefore it’s pretty much perfect for wicked problems!

  • And it’s even better when combined with an agile methodology, an iterative approach to design and product development. Agile methodology helps to improve solutions through collaboration. This agile, collaborative environment breeds the ability to be efficient and effectively meet the stakeholders’ changing requirements.

Together, systems thinking and agile methodology lead us to a better solution at each iteration as they both evolve with the wicked problem.

Illustration showing the feedback loop, with users giving feedback and requests to the development team and the development team sharing demos and new releases to users.

In an agile methodology, every iteration incorporates feedback from the previous release. This process can help you tackle wicked problems when it’s combined with systems thinking.

© Daniel Skrok and the Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

5 Ways to Apply Systems Thinking and Agile Methodology in Your Work

If you’ve been faced with a wicked problem in the past, you’ll have undoubtedly experienced frustration from not knowing where or how to begin. There’s no shame in that—issues which are difficult or nearly impossible to solve will do that to a person! The next time you and your team must tackle a wicked problem, you can use these five handy methods which are based on systems thinking and agile methodology:

1. Break down information into nodes and links.

You can utilize systems thinking if you break the information down into nodes (chunks of information such as objects, people or concepts) and links (the connections and relationships between the nodes). This will make your private mental models (your representations of external reality) visible to the outside world and help you face wicked problems more effectively. Jay Wright Forrester, a pioneer in computer engineering and systems science, put it nicely when he said:

"The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world, government or country. He has only selected concepts, and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the real system.”

—Jay Wright Forrester

Four sketches of people showing how they make toast. It's a way of showing how people think about process.

In this illustration, the nodes are circled in red and the links are the red lines drawn between the nodes. All four illustrations are systems models that participants created from Tom Wujec’s workshops on collaborative visualization and systems thinking.

© Tom Wujec, CC BY 3.0

2. Visualize the information.

When you sketch out and place information into a physical space, it will help both you and your team take in and understand the systems at hand—as well as the relationships within and between them.

3. Collaborate and include stakeholders in the process.

Share your mental models to help other people build on your ideas, and vice versa. Your team can synthesize several points of view when you create physical drawings and group notes to produce different systems models.

4. Release solutions quickly to gather continuous feedback.

Feedback of success helps to solve problems which we don’t have one single obviously correct answer for. The more feedback you gather from your users and stakeholders, the more guidance you’ll have to get to the next step.

5. Carry out multiple iterations.

You and your team have the chance to utilize feedback at each iteration. The more iterations you do, the more likely you’ll determine what changes are needed to further improve the solution to your wicked problem.

Sketch of existing solution to next iteration with a bridge with people on it between the two concepts.

You’ll build a bridge between the existing solution and the next iteration when you combine user and stakeholder feedback with your team’s thoughts and ideas.

© Un-School MX, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Take Away

As designers, we have the responsibility to generate the best solution possible even when the wicked problem itself is indeterminate and the best solution does not yet exist. A combination of systems thinking and agile methodology can help us tackle these wicked problems. It encourages us to utilize these practices and share them with others so that we can, together, get to the next iteration of the design process.

When you start to tackle wicked problems, you can start to improve the world and the lives of the people who live in it. As a reminder, the five steps to do this are:

  1. Break down information into nodes and links.

  2. Visualize the information.

  3. Collaborate and include stakeholders in the process.

  4. Release solutions quickly and gather continuous feedback.

  5. Carry out multiple iterations.

References & Where To Learn More

Rittel, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences, 4(2), 155-169.

Buchanan, Richard. (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues, Vol. 8, No. 2, (Spring, 1992), 5-21.

Ana de Almeida Kumlien & Paul Coughlan, Wicked problems and how to solve them, 2018.

John C. Camillus, Strategy as a Wicked Problem, 2006.

Amy C. Edmundson, Wicked-Problem Solvers, 2016.

John Kolko, Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving, 2012.

Stony Brook University, What’s a Wicked Problem?

Tom Wujec, TEDGlobal, Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast, 2013:

Images

Hero Image: © Diana Parkhouse, Unsplash License.

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Topics in This Article

Wicked Problems Systems Thinking Design Thinking (DT) Iterative Development Agile Development
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