EXPLORING THE STRUCTURE OF DESIGN PROBLEMS

In this paper we will concentrate on exploring a subject that has been much neglected in Design Methodology: the structure of design problems. Design problems have been called ‘ill-structured’ or even ‘wicked’, but very little effort has been made to describe what ‘weak’ structure they have. This is an important subject, because this ‘weak’ structure must play a part in a designers’ decision to tackle a design problem in one way or the other. In a theoretical investigation we describe what we can find in Design Methodology about the structure of design problems. This will focus on the descriptions of design problems as ‘illstructured problems’, as ‘underdetermined problems’ and on the way design problems are treated within the two paradigms of design methodology. Then we develop an approach to the study of design problems, that takes the situated nature of design problems into account. A method for the empirical study of the structure of design problems is outlined, based on linkography.

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