Marzavan – Category: Human Centered Design

Changedarer In Design, Human Centered Design

The Rittel and Webber 10 characteristics that help you track and recognize a wicked problem

Inspired by “Characteristics of wicked problems” (Rittel and Webber, 1973)

This was a call to all Bauhaus students by dean Lucius Burkhard and inspired us to think about how we can define problems in the first place.

The last two years have taught us that things are not black or white. Especially our two year engagement with Connective Cities and local administrations highlighted how global crises (pandemic, climate crisis, war, environmental catastrophes) trigger creativity in the ways we think about solutions but also demand for new ways of diagnosing problems.

We decided to share some of our learnings from academia and practice since we are lucky enough to have learnt and experienced some great ways to diagnose challenges and tackle them.

One of the key ingredients for an innovation mindset is understanding the problem and defining it properly. An easy to memorize, but hard to apply statement that obliges us to find different ways to approach the problems in order to be as accurate as possible along the Design Thinking process.

Usually related to public or social innovation, wicked problems exist in all spheres of life. It doesn’t matter if we are facing a personal, social, political or corporate challenge, if we dig properly we’ll find that some problems are “impossible to solve”. According to Rittel and Webber (1973) there are 10 characteristics that help you track and recognize a Wicked Problem.

There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.
There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
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.
Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem’s resolution.
The planner has no right to be wrong.

Challenging, isn’t it? And that’s the idea. If we truly demand ourselves to frame wicked problems according to these characteristics, we’ll definitely boost creativity along the Design Thinking process, because the greatest ideas come from truly understanding the nature of the greatest challenges.

Pssst… we designed a digital poster with the “10 Characteristics to identify wicked problems” Do you want it? Send us a message and it’ll be yours.

Changedarer In Development Aid, Digitalization, Human Centered Design

Keeping the Connective Cities Global Exchange Alive

2020, Kiel and Weimar, Germany

Let’s keep the Connective Cities Global Exchange alive!

After such an intense Community Event filled with personal story sharing moments we decided to capture Good Practices in a series of:

– 2 documentary movies
– 5 podcasts
– 10 interviews.

Through these audiovisual products, we’ll let you know the people behind some of the projects that helped to tackle the COVID-19 crisis in several municipalities around the Globe during 2020 that will raise our hope for 2021.

Our first Connective Cities‘ stop: Weimar

A city that attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world every year. Watch how did the local city guides, hoteliers and small shop owners react to the lockdown? And what did the local authorities do?

To continue our documentaries we traveled to #Kiel, where we captured deep insights from a city that, as a digital champion, had to adapt quick in order to keep its Startup community alive and cope with several Social Media besides the challenging circumstances.

Watch our second stop through this 7 minute exclusive documentary.

Special credits to: Alexander Orth Imke Schröder Jesko-Alexander Zychski Lina Ries Connective Cities

Produced by: NowHere Media Anatol Kowalewski Marzavan Innovation

Changedarer In Design Thinking, Empathy, Human Centered Design

How to fight corruption with meraki

2015, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

In 2015, with Paulo Emediato, we played ‘The Corruption Game’ with Belo Horizonte’s vibrant creative community: Mesha. This workshop helps reclaim agency by building empathy with the inner predator. All of this, applying empathy through a unique and humane methodology.

Travel with me to 2015, taste how a crisis triggers creativity, see how design thinking enhances this transformation and remember that we can always reveal light from darkness.

Changedarer In Bauhaus, Design Thinking, Human Centered Design

The Bauhaus effect

A human centered time travel from Bauhaus to Design Thinking

In the 1920´s, after World War I, Germany was in ruins. Artists and designers of the Bauhaus school of though, created by the architect Walter Gropius at Weimar, were overturned to transform and rebuild German society through design. Here, students were encouraged to experiment across different disciplines: painting, carpentry, printmaking, dance, lettering, among others with the aim of creating objects and art to serve people.

Empathy for others was the engine that ignited the flame of this school of design and is the same reason why Design Thinking is a tool that helps organizations be more innovative and purpose-driven. Two mindsets that encourage us to be integrative and radically interdisciplinary.

“Form follows function”

When we have an idea or a form that allegedly comes from necessity or desire, we think about all the details that would help solve that challenge, but usually we only have our point of view, our background and education to generate the solution. Then, when we sell or share our idea to others we realize that we have missed a lot of vital information from them. That’s why is so important, from the beginning of the design process, to step outside from our beliefs and experiences and be willing to listen, see, and learn from other people. Communication and collaborative work is the key to design that idea or thought that functions to every member of the project or community.

Interdisciplinary work means bringing together the best of all the members of your team, their education, knowledge, virtues and experience in an organized and methodical way to resume the assets of each member into the final product, idea or policy. A good communication strategy is the key to get your team through the path of transforming a knot into an idea that changes the world, just as the Bauhaus School did, just as we do through Design Thinking.

We realized that design’s not an intellectual or material issue but something inseparable from everyday’s life in a civilized society
Walter Gropius