Kees Dorst, Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation, University of Technology

Sydney, Australia

Design beyond Design

Abstract As organizations struggle to respond to a world in which prob- Keywords

lems are becoming more open, complex and increasingly networked, many Paradigm
Design reasoning
have turned to design thinking as a way to obtain solutions and achieve in-
Cognitive limit
novation. In this article, I will focus on the question of whether the current Problem solving
design paradigm is capable of delivering on these expectations, or whether Complexity
design is overextended when dealing with areas of great complexity, such
as in the social realm. The fact that at its core, design reasoning or design
abduction requires the consideration of two unknowns more or less simul-
taneously (the “what” and the “how”) puts a heavy strain on our human
cognitive limitations in the best of times—and doubly so in highly com- Received August 6, 2018
Accepted May 4, 2019
plex problem situations. Over the years, expert designers have developed
an elaborate array of coping strategies to contend with this issue. All of
these help to a degree, but the fundamental issue remains. Design might Email
be limiting itself by approaching complex problem situations through a Kees Dorst
(corresponding author)
‘problem solving’ perspective. In this article, a radically different approach [Link]@[Link]

is explored, which takes the complex nature of the problem situation as its
starting point, and reframes the task of design as system transformation,
rather than the creation of a solution. An example from practice illustrates
this new design paradigm.

Copyright © 2019, Tongji University and Tongji University Press.

Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the
CC BY-NC-ND license ([Link]
The peer review process is the responsibility of Tongji University and Tongji University Press.

[Link]
[Link]

Design beyond Design 117

1 Hans Boutellier, The Impro- Introduction
vising Society: Social Order in a
World without Boundaries (The Many public and private organizations struggle with today’s complex, networked
Hague: Eleven, 2013). problems.1 In search of novel problem solving strategies, some have turned to the
2 Lisa Carlgren, Maria Elmquist, design professions and sought to adopt design thinking tools and techniques. As it
and Ingo Rauth, “The Challenges turns out, this is not always a straightforward process.2 Design as we know it has
of Using Design Thinking in
Industry—Experiences from
been shaped in a very specific context, and thus comes with its own set of assump-
Five Large Firms,” Creativity and tions, biases, and historical legacies. Applying design practices beyond this normal
Innovation Management 25, no. 3 design context is bound to bring up issues that require design to adapt and change
(2016): 344–62, DOI: [Link]
org/10.1111/caim.12176.
to stay in tune with its new role in its new environment.
In this viewpoint article, we will explore three questions:
3 Ilpo K. Koskinen and Kees
Dorst, “Academic Design,” in
1. Has design reasoning hit the ceiling in regards to the complexity it can
Proceedings of the 20th Interna- handle (in a fundamental sense)?
tional Conference on Engineering 2. If not, would it be it possible to evolve existing design approaches to deal
Design (ICED 15), Vol. 11: Human
with greater complexity?
Behaviour in Design, ed. Christian
Weber et al. (Milan: Politecnico 3. Otherwise, does this call for a more fundamental shift—do we need to move
di Milano, 2015), 227–34, towards a new design paradigm?
available at [Link]
[Link]/publication/38015/
ACADEMIC+DESIGN. We will use developments found in the burgeoning practice of social design to illus-
trate design’s struggle to address extremely complex problem situations.
4 John Heskett, Industrial Design
(London:Thames and Hudson,
1980).

5 Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer

Hitting the Ceiling
and Kees Dorst, “Advancing the In its evolution from craft to sophisticated professional practice and academic disci-
Strategic Impact of Human-­
Centred Design,” Design Studies
pline,3 design has always had to find novel ways of dealing with the ever-increasing
53 (November 2017): 1–23, complexity of the problems it needed to address. It has hit the ceiling again and
DOI: [Link] again, and always managed to adapt and change with the times.
destud.2017.06.003.
The evolution of various design disciplines can be partially understood in these
terms. Let us take the development of industrial design in the West as an example.
Its history begins in the Middle Ages, when objects for use were made by craftsmen
who fluently combined designing and making in a single creative practice. The
Industrial Revolution created the need for a separate design profession that could
give form to industrially manufactured products.4 After WWII, increasing technical
complexity plus the need for efficiency in mass production forced designers beyond
classic form-giving (Gestaltung) to consider many other aspects of a product—tech-
nology, form, ergonomics, business needs, and so on—in a more integrated manner.
The central idea behind this new incarnation of industrial design was that to
truly integrate these concerns, one would need a single person to keep track of the
thinking governing every aspect of a product. The assumption being that it would
be possible for a single person—the integrated product designer—to keep the requisite
knowledge in his or her head, and integrate the various strands of thinking in an
effective and timely manner.
Due to the growing complexity of design problems and designed outcomes,
this assumption no longer holds. Industrial design is now a process undertaken by
teams of specialists working together. But even multidisciplinary design teams are
not the answer—much of the complex knowledge that needs to feed into a design
is about the user. The multi-layered interactions that now take place between
people and products has led to the development of co-design practices that can in-
corporate the user perspective in product development upstream; prospective users
have become active participants in design projects and processes.5
Please note that this should not be read as a linear story in which a single
new design paradigm has replaced the old—many forms of design co-exist today.
Design is branching out, each challenge leading to a new limb on the tree of design
disciplines.

118 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2019
 As an example of the next complex challenge to the discipline of design, let 6 Nynke Tromp and Paul Hekkert,
Designing for Society: Products
us turn to social design.6 There are several reasons for design to move into the role and Services for a Better World
of contributing to societal change. One reason is that the conventional problem (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).
solving approaches that prevail in the public sector deal with complex social chal- 7 Marcel J.C.M. Hertogh and
lenges by splitting them up into sub problems, often in a way that is directly tied Edward Westerveld, Playing with
to professional and organizational structures.7 This effectively creates another Complexity: Management and
Organisation of Large Infrastruc-
problem: the need to integrate partial solutions into a coherent whole later on. A
ture Projects (Rotterdam: Erasmus
more integrated, holistic, design-like approach throughout the project could be University, 2010), available at
more efficient and lead to better outcomes. [Link]

Another reason design is ready to contend with societal challenges is that 8 Roderick J. Walden and Kees
while many complex problems are approached from a technological/technocratic Dorst, “The Integration of Design
Parameters and the Establishment
perspective, much of the complexity in today’s problems stems from the human
of Constraint and Priority for
domain. Design, as a natural bridge-builder between technology and humanity, is Innovation,” in Proceedings of the
ideally positioned to contribute. DesignEd Asia Conference 2013
(Hong Kong: Hong Kong Polytech-
But this is not easy. Social design requires designers to manage multiple stake-
nic University, 2013), 1–9, available
holders in the problem space as well as in the solution space, and it requires the at [Link]
combination and eventual integration of multiple fields of professional knowledge com/2013/[Link].

into what are often very complex product-service combinations. This hypercom- 9 Nigel Cross, “Designerly
plexity has to be dealt with in a situation where there often is no clear user and/ Ways of Knowing: Design
Discipline versus Design
or clear (single) client to guide the designer through the design process. This later
Science,” Design Issues 17, no. 3
point is important: early attempts to do ‘social design’ by directly applying conven- (2001): 49–55, DOI: [Link]
tional design practices to societal issues often led to simplistic and naïve solutions. org/10.1162/074793601750357196.
This was possible caused by the fact that in ‘normal’ design projects, the client 10 Norbert F. M. Roozenburg
has the role of continually feeding professional knowledge into the design project, and Johannes Eekels, Product
Design: Fundamentals and Methods
and questioning the assumptions that could creep into the developing solutions.
(Chichester: John Wiley & Sons
However, in social design there often is no clear (single) client, so assumptions can Inc., 1995), 72.
easily go unchecked.8 This application of design beyond its normal field of opera-
11 For an overview, see Kees
tion thus highlights a crucial element of design practice (in this case the role of the Dorst, Frame Innovation: Create
client) we might not have been aware of—within normal design practice, the role New Thinking by Design (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 45;
of the client is largely taken for granted (and consequently, the role of the client
and Kees Dorst, Notes on Design
has hardly been an object of study within design research). (Amsterdam: BIS publishers,
But is designerly thinking9 really suited to hypercomplex challenges, or has 2017), 13.
design reasoning finally hit the ceiling of what it can do?

Design Reasoning
To address these pressing questions, let us take a step back and consider the pat-
tern of reasoning at the core of design. According to formal logic, the world is
made up of elements, which are the “what” of a reasoning process; the connections be-
tween these elements, which we may call the “how” of a process; and the outcome of
the reasoning process, in which the elements have interacted.10 We can understand
the basic reasoning patterns of human problem solving by comparing different sets
of the knowns and unknowns in an equation that might look like this:

WHAT + HOW leads to OUTCOME

There are four basic patterns of reasoning: deduction, induction, normal abduction,
and design abduction.11 Leaving the first three aside, we will focus here on design
abduction. In design abduction, to begin with, all we know is something about the
outcome, the desired value.

???? + ???? leads to OUTCOME

Design beyond Design 119

12 George A. Miller, “The The challenge lies in figuring out what new elements to create, even though there
Magical Number Seven, Plus or
Minus Two: Some Limits on Our
is no known (or chosen) how that will lead to the desired outcome. As they are de-
Capacity for Processing Infor- pendent on one another, the what and the how have to be developed more or less
mation,” Psychological Review simultaneously. This double creative step requires designers to devise proposals for
63, no. 2 (1956): 81, DOI: https://
[Link]/doi/10.1037/
both the what and the how and test them in conjunction. The only way to approach
h0043158. this open problem situation is to work backwards (from right to left in the equa-
tion): starting from the only known in the equation, the desired value, and then
13 Herbert A. Simon, “The
Structure of Ill Structured adopting or proposing a new how. The act of proposing a new how is called framing.
Problems,” Artificial Intelligence Thus in design reasoning, we experimentally frame and reframe until we find a
4, no. 3–4 (1973): 181–201, DOI:
way into the problem area. This should raise a warning flag—design abduction
[Link]
3702(73)90011-8. means contending with TWO unknowns. This causes designers to bump up against
the limits of human cognition, potentially leading to information overload. Cogni-
14 Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin
M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a tive research has shown that we humans can only hold a limited amount of infor-
General Theory of Planning,” mation in our heads at any given moment, and the limit has famously been set at
Policy Sciences 4, no. 2 (1973):
“seven plus or minus two chunks.”12 This has been of concern to design researchers
155–69, DOI: [Link]
org/10.1007/BF01405730. In a for a long time, and has led to our considering design problems as ill-structured,13
way, this is a misnomer: the wick- or even wicked.14
edness of the problem is relative
The good news is that in design abduction, we don’t have to get it right in
to the capabilities problem
solver(s) and the reasoning one shot: design abduction takes place over a longer, iterative creative process.
patterns at their disposal. The act of framing the problem and solution involves a sequence of creative (prop-
15 Mary Lou Maher and ositional), deductive, critical steps. In this process, the problem and solution co-
Josiah Poon, “Modeling Design evolve15 until a “fit” between the two is found. The nature of the outcome—the
Exploration as Co-evolution,”
value to be achieved—can also shift, depending on that fit. This is an exciting and
Computer-Aided Civil and Infra-
structure Engineering 11, no. 3 playful process: the art of designing lies in the skillful juggling of problem frames,
(1996): 195–209, DOI: [Link] design principles, and solution ideas until they all fit together snugly. At the same
org/10.1111/j.1467-8667.1996.
time, this is a difficult practice: in design abduction, the complexities of problem
tb00323.x; Kees Dorst and
Nigel Cross, “Creativity in the space, framing, and solution are combined, which means designers may simply
Design Process: Co-evolution have too many balls in the air. They are continuously in peril of losing focus and
of Problem-­Solution,” Design
an overarching perspective, because they often exceed the magic seven-plus-or-­
Studies 22, no. 5 (2001): 425–37,
DOI: [Link] minus-two boundary of their all-too-human cognitive abilities.
S0142-694X(01)00009-6. What are the practices designers have developed to deal with complexity-­
16 Kees Dorst, Describing spawned information overload?
Design: A Comparison of Para-
digms (Delft:Technische Univer-
siteit Delft, 1997), 47, 70.
Designers’ Strategies for Dealing with Complexity
17 Miller, “The Magical Number
Complexity is such a pervasive issue in design that designers have developed a
Seven,” 81; William G. Chase and
Herbert A. Simon, “Perception plethora of clever and pragmatic strategies, methods, tools, and elaborate heuris-
in Chess,” Cognitive Psychol- tics for information management, all of which help to limit the burden on short-
ogy 4, no. 1 (1973): 56, DOI:
term memory, for instance through the clever use of external representations such
[Link]
0285(73)90004-2. as sketches, models, and so on. Although these strategies merit research in their
own right, in this article I am interested more fundamentally in design as a rea-
soning pattern, and in the way designers’ reasoning is influenced by the need to
cope with the stresses of complexity.
These reasoning strategies can be classed according to the element of the
design situation they address. A design situation contains (1) a designer—person,
team or organization—as the actor; (2) a design problem and co-evolving design
proposition; (3) a design context; and (4) a dynamic design process.16 Each of these
contains elements and variables that can be manipulated to find ways around the
complexity of the design situation. Here we name just a few.
• The reasoning of the actor (person or team) is limited by certain cogni-
tive boundaries. But the elements of thinking that are mentioned in the
ominous cognitive limit of seven-plus-or-minus-two are not simple bytes,
but chunks.17 These units of knowledge can be very complex in their own

120 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2019
 right—indeed, an important part of the development of expertise is creation 18 Bryan Lawson and Kees
Dorst, Design Expertise
of more complex and sophisticated chunks.18 This is precisely what gives (Abingdon: Architectural Press,
experts an advantage over novices, and makes expert design processes so 2013), 172, DOI: [Link]
very different from those of novices. An increase in sophistication and com- org/10.4324/9781315072043.

plexity in the chunks happens more or less naturally as one builds up expe- 19 Rianne Valkenburg and Kees
rience, but it can also be triggered deliberately and strategically. Dorst, “The Reflective Practice
of Design Teams,” Design Studies
• Design is often a team effort, so there can be more than one actor working
19, no. 3 (1998): 249–71, DOI:
in unison. This probably doesn’t translate into a linear increase in infor- [Link]
mation processing capacity. A certain level of overlap is required to make 694X(98)00011-8.

sure the actors within the team have a common ground—a shared under- 20 Wim Groeneboom, quoted
standing19—but in principle at least, the parallel processing capacity of in Lawson and Dorst, Design
Expertise, 33.
those brains could grow the team’s collective cognitive design capacity. In
really complex situations, adopting a co-design approach can be helpful 21 Donald A. Schön, The Reflec-
tive Practitioner: How Profession-
by having relevant aspects of the problem situation represented by people
als Think in Action (1992; Abing-
in the design team. The downside of this approach might be that the com- don: Routledge, 2017), 41, https://
plexity of the problem situation is directly repeated in the design team, [Link]/10.4324/9781315237473;
Donald A. Schön, Educating
paradoxes and all.
the Reflective Practitioner (San
• Complexity is often seen as a property of the world outside us. But there is Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987), 5.
another, inward complexity that is equally hard to deal with. Our inner con-
22 Lawson and Dorst, Design
tradictions hold us to ransom by creating thought patterns that go around Expertise, 39.
in circles, and keep us from progressing. During a series of interviews with
23 Jane Darke, “The Primary
design experts, some described their professional development not so much Generator and the Design
as progress towards higher and higher levels of sophistication, but as “be- Process,” Design Studies 1,
no. 1 (1979): 36–44, DOI:
coming more themselves,” a shedding of initial inner conflict to arrive at a
[Link]
pure and simple core.20 694X(79)90027-9.
• Although some theorists like to stress the uniqueness of design situations21
24 Ken Yeang, quoted in Lawson
design practitioners know that they come in types. Understanding the types and Dorst, Design Expertise, 63.
of design situations is an important part of design expertise. Recognizing
25 Jan Gehl, Life between
the pattern in a design situation helps pre-structure it, affording an initial Buildings: Using Public Space,
strategy to approach the problem situation. There are always differences in trans. Jo Koch (Washington, DC:
Island Press, 2011).
the details, but this means that at least there is a gambit the designer can
use to make his or her first move within the complex problem arena.22 Care 26 Bryan Lawson, How Designers
should be taken to treat this initial foray into the problem space with some Think:The Design Process De­
mystified, 4th ed. (London: Rout-
lightness, and not fixate on it too much—earlier research has shown that ledge, 2006),135, DOI: https://
levity at this juncture is hard, and designers often tend to try and make this [Link]/10.4324/9780080454979;
primary generator work at all costs.23 Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The
Design of Design: Essays from
• A designer should have a broad understanding of precedents: earlier ap- a Computer Scientist (Boston:
proaches and designs that might be applicable to the current design chal- Pearson Education, 2010), 133.
lenge. Again, having such a treasury of design frames and design solutions
is often associated with expertise built up over many years of practice, but
which can also be constructed deliberately. Design agencies tend to do this
by keeping some of the more interesting projects—the ones they identify
with, or still want to think about—close at hand, for re-use. The pictures on
the walls of a design studio refer to these projects. They are not there for
decorative purposes, but as the result of deliberate, strategic decisions about
which projects to keep in peripheral view.24 A design studio is a library of
frames and solution ideas.
• A layering of design problems and solutions is used in complex design fields
like software engineering (architecture) and urban planning, where the
designer shifts perspective from the large scale (airplane view), to helicopter-­
view, to birds-eye view and eventually to the eye level of the person on the
street.25 By taking on these different layers of scale as a series of design chal-
lenges, one by one, the overall cognitive load of design abduction is eased.26

Design beyond Design 121

27 Peter Jones and Jeremy • One can also explore the problem space through deliberate/systematic
Bowes, “Rendering Systems
Visible for Design: Synthesis
research, using systemic design methods and tools like synthesis maps.27
Maps as Constructivist Design Because the very creation of a representation/description already entails
Narratives,” She Ji:The Journal of a level of selection and framing, the assumptions behind these mappings
Design, Economics, and Inno-
vation 3, no. 3 (2017): 229–48,
should be questioned regularly. Early adoption of a representation could
DOI: [Link] introduce a specific framework (terminology) that unduly limits the design
sheji.2017.12.001. space.
28 Annemiek van Boeijen et al., • In an effort to get a measure of control over the messiness of design pro-
eds., Delft Design Guide: Design cesses, design practitioners and theorists alike have proposed sophisticated
Strategies and Methods (Delft:
ways to cut up the complex design process into simpler steps. This
Technische Universiteit Delft,
2014), 21; Steven Kyffin and has resulted in phase models of designing, the mainstay of classic design
Paul Gardien, “Navigating the methodology. In many design schools, phase models have become the
Innovation Matrix: An Approach
backbone of design education, and in large organizations they have led to
to Design-Led Innovation,”
International Journal of Design sophisticated stage-gate models to manage design projects.28 In this rational
3, no. 1 (2009): 57–69, available problem solving approach to designing, design abduction is modeled as a
at [Link]
creative search process going from an initial problem to a solution through
IJDesign/article/view/305; Paul
Gardien et al., “Changing Your a series of divergent and convergent phases, often symbolized in the shape
Hammer:The Implications of of a double diamond.29 An alternative way of understanding design is to
Paradigmatic Innovation for
model it as a learning process: name – frame – move – evaluate,30 which is a
Design Practice,” International
Journal of Design 8, no. 2 reflective practice. It should be noted that in this constructionist theory of
(2014):119–39, available at http:// professional practice, design progresses through a series of explorations
[Link]/[Link]/IJDesign/
rather than through a sequence of divergent and convergent phases. The
article/view/1315.
evaluation step focuses on the design actions—“Is this action leading in a
29 Kees Dorst, “On the Problem
fruitful direction?”—rather than on the emerging design solution.
of Design Problems—Problem
Solving and Design Expertise,”
Journal of Design Research 4, no. All of these strategies have been described in design research, and all can be traced
2 (2004): 185–96, DOI: [Link]
back to expert design practices. They are based on various ways of cutting up com-
org/10.1504/JDR.2004.009841.
plexity, and overcoming the cognitive limitations of the designer by (temporary)
30 Dorst, Describing Design, 75.
simplification, effectively reducing of the number of items under consideration
31 Gabriela Goldschmidt, at any one time. Crucially, each strategy—in its own, very different way—seeks
“Avoiding Design Fixation: to keep design abduction alive in a complex design process. The natural human
Transformation and Abstrac-
tion in Mapping from Source tendency to reduce uncertainty, tension and complexity by jumping to conclu-
to Target,” The Journal of sions all too easily makes us move away from the openness of design abduction to
Creative Behavior 45, no. 2 safer, result-focused reasoning. We are never more than one step away from design
(2011): 92–100, DOI: [Link]
org/10.1002/j.2162-6057.2011. fixation.31
tb01088.x.

32 David J. Snowden and Mary

E. Boone, “A Leader’s Frame- Discussion: Design beyond Problem Solving
work for Decision Making,”
Could we be missing the point here? As we saw in Section 1, the practices and
Harvard Business Review 85, no.
11 (2007): 68, available at https:// strategic fixes I describe in this article have grown and developed over time, as
[Link]/2007/11/a-leaders-frame- design has evolved and branched out in response to problems that have become in-
work-for-decision-making.
creasingly complicated. But maybe we are now at a point where, in the face of true
33 Armand Hatchuel, “Towards complexity, this evolutionary approach to developing new branches on the tree of
Design Theory and Expandable
design may not be enough.
Rationality:The Unfinished
Program of Herbert Simon,” When problems move from being very complicated to truly complex, our
Journal of Management and ways addressing them ought to shift radically.32 If design is entering a time of
Governance 5, no. 3–4 (2001):
true complexity, we have to radically shift our thinking and move away from
260–73, DOI: [Link]
org/10.1023/A:1014044305704. design paradigms based on problem solving33 to create a new paradigm based on
complexity theory and systems thinking.34 These disciplines demonstrate that in
34 Philip Ball, Why Society Is
a Complex Matter: Meeting really complex systems, newness comes from the emergence of order, rather than
Twenty-First Century Challenges goal-directed creation; change is achieved through influencing the system, rather
with a New Kind of Science than implementation of a plan to solve the problem; and new state of relative sta-
(Heidelberg: Springer Science &
Business Media, 2012). bility can be achieved by creating resilience, rather than striving for an immutable

122 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2019
structure—that so-called solution. In a complex problem situation, any attempt to 35 See the notion of “transfor-
mative teleology” in Complexity
search for “the” solution would be riddled with assumptions. In a truly complex and Management: Fad or Radical
situation, there IS no solution—the way to achieve progress is to create high-quality Challenge to Systems Thinking?,
interventions to bring the whole system forward into a more desired state.35 ed. Ralph D. Stacey, Douglas
Griffin, and Patricia Shaw
So, what ARE the key issues confronting a design professional dealing with a (London: Routledge, 2000),
complex, networked situation? First of all, the starting point is difficult to ­discern— 52–54.
in other words, it is difficult to interpret the problem situation. Secondly, precisely
36 For example, see Megan
which relationships in the tangle of a complex system are going to be important ­Anderson et al., Pioneers:
in shaping what would be the appropriate way forward is quite unclear. To tackle Thoughts on Global Design
Research (London: STBY, 2017).
these two issues the designer can adopt a propositional approach both at the stage
of interpretation (of that first understanding) and during the action/intervention 37 Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer,
“The Power of Trust and Mo-
stage, to create feedback that will demonstrate which relationships in the com-
tivation in a Designing Social
plex problem situation are key, and which can safely be ignored (for the moment). System” (working paper, RSD6
While the interpretation step could possibly be carried out using inductive rea- Relating Systems Thinking
and Design 2017, Oslo School
soning, the intervention step requires the open reasoning of design abduction. This
of Architecture and Design,
requires the ability to (repeatedly) frame the complex problem situation, propose Oslo), available at https://
possible solutions (moves/gambits) and reflect on the efficacy of both of these. [Link]/rsd6/sys-
temic-design-theory-and-meth-
Please note that this is leads the designer in the direction of an explorative, reflec-
ods/#brouwer.
tive, practice approach to designing. The prerequisites for using a rational problem
38 For more information see
solving approach to designing—first establish the goal, map problem and solution
[Link]
spaces, optimize the search path, create a solution, and so on—are not met in truly com.
complex design situations. This means that designers should move away from a
problem-solving approach to design, and embrace the complex nature of the design
situation as the starting point for shaping new, much more exploratory design
processes.

Conclusion: Towards a New Design Paradigm?

In this article, I set out to trace how design fares at higher levels of complexity,
and whether designers need a fundamental shift/a new design paradigm to meet
the complex challenges of the future. This question was sparked by the observa-
tion that design has trouble dealing with very complex problem situations, de-
spite the strategies and inventive workarounds that have been developed over the
years. These strategies do help designers individually and collectively manage the
cognitive load on the designer/design team, but dealing with all the information
contained in the complex design situation remains a stretch. Complexity theory
inspires us to think that in situations of true complexity, the challenge is to in-
tervene in a way that makes the whole system move to a more desired state. This
potentially upends our view of what designing is, beyond the notion of a problem,
or a solution that is the outcome of a project. If we think design can rise to this
challenge, what new forms of design would we need to develop? Where can we find
these new practices? Are new, paradigmatic examples emerging?
If we look to state of the art design practices, those at the cutting edge of
complexity are to be found in social design projects of design agencies36 and (semi-­
governmental) design labs.37 One such leading innovative design consultancy
in this field is Reframing Studio in Amsterdam.38 In 2015 they embarked on a
program called “Redesigning Psychiatry”—a complete reimagining of the Dutch
mental health service to be fit for purpose by 2030.
The Dutch mental health care system serves about a million citizens per year.
The society in which the system operates is changing rapidly, and many mental
health care organizations are struggling as they face economic and demographic
challenges. At the same time, there is a sense that there is room for improve-
ment in the mental health care system, for example by taking advantage of new

Design beyond Design 123

39 Manfred A. Max-Neef, technologies to offer smarter care solutions. But innovation still struggles to get
“Foundations of Transdiscipli-
narity,” Ecological Economics
beyond a translation of existing practices into digital applications.
53, no. 1 (2005): 5–16, DOI: Redesigning Psychiatry is a collaboration bringing together 10 innovative
[Link] mental health care organizations, universities, and government bodies. The
ecolecon.2005.01.014; Dorst,
Notes on Design; Paul Hekkert
wide ranging program combines interview and desktop research with systems
and Matthijs van Dijk, ViP—Vision thinking, reflective design practices, intense stakeholder collaboration, and the
in Design: A Guidebook for testing of new solutions. Design questions around the desired interaction between
Innovators (Amsterdam: BIS
the distressed individual and the future mental health care system are the central
publishers, 2011).
driver for thinking through a much broader systems-level change. During the first
40 Neoteny, a term from
phase, the consortium of collaborators developed a shared vision of the future
evolutionary biology, is a species’
retention of its juvenile features system and its core characteristics. Interestingly, the first phase also encompassed
into adulthood. Homo sapiens a separate project to design a normative framework for the development of the
are a prime example of this,
health care system. After all, the project is not aimed at designing improvements
because we still look like young
apes—we have high foreheads, of the existing system, it seeks to create a new system that will be fit-for-purpose
large brains, relatively short in 2030, so everyone needed to envisage what the values and needs of that society
limbs, and little body hair.
would be. In the second phase, proposals for innovations (IT solutions, clinical
Stephen J. Gould, “Change in
Developmental Timing as a interaction types, and policy advice) were developed. Then a roadmap was devised
Mechanism of Macroevolution,” that laid out the route toward effecting the desired changes. Additional symposia and
in Evolution and Development,
workshops involved a wider group of stakeholders beyond the consortium.
ed. J.T. Bonner (Berlin, Heidel-
berg: Springer, 1982), 333–46; Some key features of the Redesigning Psychiatry program are
also see Stephen Jay Gould, The 1. It is a design-driven program of activities, rather than a design project;
Mismeasure of Man (New York:
2. It is a multi-year approach, comprised of sub-projects in which multiple
WW Norton & Company, 1996).
stakeholders have roles that vary over time;
41 Stacey, Griffin, and Shaw,
3. It concentrates on exploration and problem setting, rather than problem
Complexity and Management.
solving;
4. There is a layered approach to the program and the values that are to be
achieved, the principles and approaches to achieving these values, the
method(s) and tools associated with these approaches, and the concrete
actions taken;39
5. Across each of the sub-projects, design abduction is used to keep the
problem space and solution space open, and avoid jumping to conclusions;
6. The approach overall is a highly iterative framing and reframing of the
issues until a dominant direction emerges; and
7. The designers seek to respect, conserve, and activate the partner organi-
zations’ existing pool of expertise. This is an open, sophisticated approach
that is a far cry from the naïve social design projects mentioned early on in
this paper.

Returning to the three questions posed in the introduction, I can now say that
design reasoning can deal with complexity if designers move away from conven-
tional problem-solving approaches to design. The strategies outlined in Section 3
are all useful, but simply extending them doesn’t tackle the fundamental issues
with adopting a problem solving approach. True complexity requires a consider-
able shift in our approach to designing, away from the problem solving model
of design to one that is based on complexity thinking. Does this then amount
to a new design paradigm? The answer, in the end, depends on our chosen defi-
nition of a paradigmatic shift. While moving away from seeing design as a kind
of problem solving—and giving up on the idea of a definable design problem,
solution, and project—is a massive shift, yet the ensuing practice and its outcome
are not completely strange to design reasoning, either. In a way, this is a form of
design neoteny,40 in the sense that the result of the design activity looks more
like an ongoing design process. The outcome of design becomes a very flexible
system with a built in, transformative teleology41 that keeps redesigning itself as

124 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2019
time goes by and circumstances change. Resilience and adaptability are key. In the 42 Sam Bucolo, Are We There
Yet?: Insights on How to Lead
Redesigning Psychiatry program, the original ideas and vision for 2030 don’t have by Design (Amsterdam: BIS
to be “right,” as long as they can be adapted over time42 in a continuing dialogue Publishers, 2015).
or dialectic process.43 Such systems, primed as they are for ongoing transforma- 43 Richard Buchanan, “Sur-
tion and inclusive of other professionals’ expertise, become a basis for transdisci- roundings and Environments in
plinary innovation.44 Fourth Order Design,” Design
Issues 35, no. 1 (2019): 4–22,
Then design moves beyond problem solving toward being the solution in itself.
DOI: [Link]
desi_a_00517.

44 Kees Dorst, “Mixing Practices

References to Create Transdisciplinary
Anderson, Megan, Geke van Dijk, and Bas Raijmakers. Pioneers: Thoughts on Global Innovation: A Design-Based
Approach,” Technology Innova-
Design Research. London: STBY, 2017. tion Management Review 8, no.
Ball, Philip. Why Society Is a Complex Matter: Meeting Twenty-First Century Challenges with 8 (2018): 60–65, DOI: [Link]
a New Kind of Science. Heidelberg: Springer Science & Business Media, 2012. org/10.22215/timreview/1179.

Boutellier, Hans. The Improvising Society: Social Order in a World without Boundaries. The
Hague: Eleven, 2013.
Brooks, Frederick P., Jr. The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist. Boston:
Pearson Education, 2010.
Buchanan, Richard. “Surroundings and Environments in Fourth Order Design.”
Design Issues 35, no. 1 (2019): 4–22. DOI: [Link]
Bucolo, Sam. Are We There Yet?: Insights on How to Lead by Design. Amsterdam: BIS
Publishers, 2015.
Carlgren, Lisa, Maria Elmquist, and Ingo Rauth. “The Challenges of Using Design
Thinking in Industry—Experiences from Five Large Firms.” Creativity and Inno-
vation Management 25, no. 3 (2016): 344–62. DOI: [Link]
Chase, William G., and Herbert A. Simon. “Perception in Chess.” Cognitive Psychology
4, no. 1 (1973): 55–81. DOI: [Link]
Cross, Nigel. “Designerly Ways of Knowing: Design Discipline versus
Design Science.” Design Issues 17, no. 3 (2001): 49–55. DOI: [Link]
org/10.1162/074793601750357196.
Darke, Jane. “The Primary Generator and the Design Process.” Design Studies 1, no. 1
(1979): 36–44. DOI: [Link]
Dorst, Kees. Describing Design: A Comparison of Paradigms. Delft: Technische Universi-
teit Delft, 1997.
Dorst, Kees. “On the Problem of Design Problems—Problem Solving and Design
Expertise.” Journal of Design Research 4, no. 2 (2004): 185–96. DOI: [Link]
org/10.1504/JDR.2004.009841.
Dorst, Kees. Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2015.
Dorst, Kees. Notes on Design. Amsterdam: BIS publishers, 2017.
Dorst, Kees. “Mixing Practices to Create Transdisciplinary Innovation: A Design-­
Based Approach.” Technology Innovation Management Review 8, no. 8 (2018): 60–65.
DOI: [Link]
Dorst, Kees, and Nigel Cross. “Creativity in the Design Process: Co-evolution of
Problem-­Solution.” Design Studies 22, no. 5 (2001): 425–37. DOI: [Link]
org/10.1016/S0142-694X(01)00009-6.
Gardien, Paul, Tom Djajadiningrat, Caroline Hummels, and Aarnout Brombacher.
“Changing Your Hammer: The Implications of Paradigmatic Innovation for
Design Practice.” International Journal of Design 8, no. 2 (2014): 119–39. Available at
[Link]
Gehl, Jan. Life between Buildings: Using Public Space. Translated by Jo Koch. Wash-
ington, DC: Island Press, 2011.
Goldschmidt, Gabriela. “Avoiding Design Fixation: Transformation and Abstraction

Design beyond Design 125

 in Mapping from Source to Target.” The Journal of Creative Behavior 45, no. 2
(2011): 92–100. DOI: [Link]
Gould, Stephen J. “Change in Developmental Timing as a Mechanism of Macroevo-
lution.” In Evolution and Development, edited by J.T. Bonner, 333–46. Berlin, Hei-
delberg: Springer, 1982.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: WW Norton & Company, 1996.
Hatchuel, Armand. “Towards Design Theory and Expandable Rationality: The Un­
finished Program of Herbert Simon.” Journal of Management and Governance 5, no.
3–4 (2001): 260–73. DOI: [Link]
Hekkert, Paul, and Matthijs van Dijk. ViP—Vision in Design: A Guidebook for Innovators.
Amsterdam: BIS publishers, 2011.
Hertogh, Marcel J.C.M., and Edward Westerveld. Playing with Complexity: Management
and Organisation of Large Infrastructure Projects. Rotterdam: Erasmus University,
2010. Available at [Link]
Heskett, John. Industrial Design. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980.
Jones, Peter, and Jeremy Bowes. “Rendering Systems Visible for Design: Syn-
thesis Maps as Constructivist Design Narratives.” She Ji: The Journal of Design,
Economics, and Innovation 3, no. 3 (2017): 229–48. DOI: [Link]
sheji.2017.12.001.
Koskinen, Ilpo K., and Kees Dorst. “Academic Design.” In Proceedings of the 20th
International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 15), Vol. 11: Human Behaviour in
Design, edited by Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Gaetano Cascini, Marco
Cantamessa, Dorian Marjanovic, Monica Bordegoni, 227–34. Milan: Politecnico
di Milano, 2015. Available at [Link]
ACADEMIC+DESIGN.
Kyffin, Steven, and Paul Gardien. “Navigating the Innovation Matrix: An Approach
to Design-Led Innovation.” International Journal of Design 3, no. 1 (2009): 57–69.
Available at [Link]
Lawson, Bryan. How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified. 4th ed. London:
Routledge, 2006. DOI: [Link]
Lawson, Bryan, and Kees Dorst. Design Expertise. Abingdon: Architectural Press, 2013.
DOI: [Link]
Maher, Mary Lou, and Josiah Poon. “Modeling Design Exploration as Co‐evolution.”
Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering 11, no. 3 (1996): 195–209. DOI:
[Link]
Max-Neef, Manfred A. “Foundations of Transdisciplinarity.” Ecological Economics 53,
no. 1 (2005): 5–16. DOI: [Link]
Miller, George A. “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on
Our Capacity for Processing Information.” Psychological Review 63, no. 2 (1956):
81–97. DOI: [Link]
Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Webber. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of
Planning.” Policy Sciences 4, no. 2 (1973): 155–69. DOI: [Link]
BF01405730.
Roozenburg, Norbert F. M., and Johannes Eekels. Product Design: Fundamentals and
Methods. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1995.
Schön, Donald A. Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.
Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action.
Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. First published 1992. DOI: [Link]
org/10.4324/9781315237473.
Simon, Herbert A. “The Structure of Ill Structured Problems.” Artificial Intelligence 4,
no. 3–4 (1973): 181–201. DOI: [Link]
Snowden, David J., and Mary E. Boone. “A Leader’s Framework for Decision
Making.” Harvard Business Review 85, no. 11 (2007): 68–77. Available at [Link]

126 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2019
 org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making.
Stacey, Ralph D., Douglas Griffin, and Patricia Shaw, eds. Complexity and Management:
Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking? London: Routledge, 2000.
Tromp, Nynke, and Paul Hekkert. Designing for Society: Products and Services for a Better
World. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.
Valkenburg, Rianne, and Kees Dorst. “The Reflective Practice of Design
Teams.” Design Studies 19, no. 3 (1998): 249–71. DOI: [Link]
S0142-694X(98)00011-8.
Van Boeijen, Annemiek, Jaap Daalhuizen, Roos van der Schoor, and Jelle Zijlstra,
eds. Delft Design Guide: Design Strategies and Methods. Delft: Technische Universi-
teit Delft, 2014.
Van der Bijl-Brouwer, Mieke. “The Power of Trust and Motivation in a Designing
Social System.” Working paper, RSD6 Relating Systems Thinking and Design
2017, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo. Available at [Link]
[Link]/rsd6/systemic-design-theory-and-methods/#brouwer.
Van der Bijl-Brouwer, Mieke, and Kees Dorst. “Advancing the Strategic Impact of
Human-Centred Design.” Design Studies 53 (November 2017): 1–23. DOI: https://
[Link]/10.1016/[Link].2017.06.003.
Walden, Roderick J., and Kees Dorst. “The Integration of Design Parameters and the
Establishment of Constraint and Priority for Innovation.” In Proceedings of the
DesignEd Asia Conference 2013, 1–9. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Polytechnic Univer-
sity, 2013. Available at [Link]

Design beyond Design 127