Wicked Problems in User Interface Design

The wicked problem examples from urban planning that Rittle & Webber (1973) present ring true for information systems design because when addressing and serving more and more people’s diverse needs naturally wicked problems arise, hopefully to be solved, in large part with monkey-like mischievous solutions.

Working with Apple Computers, Mountford (1990) expressed those wicked problems in computer information systems outlining on the first page:
“The world is rich with data, rapidly becoming more and more varied in media type…
The challenge is how to best present and represent such data within the interface, to transform it into useful information.”

Making this suggestion for resolving these problems:
Future interfaces need to incorporate new information types and to accommodate new types of users with additional customized real-world interface metaphors that make information easy to find and use.”

Suggesting merging the efforts of two groups not generally thought of working together, scientists and artists. Comparisons from design traditions, animation, theater, architecture, industrial design, and information display (using Tufte’s famed cartography example of Napoleon’s March to Moscow: The War of 1812”). Suggesting looking at real world tasks and environments to find new ideas which in the technology and music fields we call “mashups” today, Mountford writes:
“Some people believe that new ideas are almost always the result of collisions –juxtapositions or recombinations of ideas” (Koestler, 1964)

These are outlined based on Adam’s (1986) brainstorming steps, as new uses for the object, adapt the object to be like something else, modify, magnify, minimize, substitute, rearrange, reverse or transpose, combine the data into an ensemble. This advice seems virtually the same as Jasper Johns’ esthetic theorem, now considered basic advice to artists --
"Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it."

Role playing is suggested as a creative exercise to delve more deeply into the change the idea or object metaphor, and outlining four personality and functional roles, the Explorer, the Artist, the Judge, the Warrior, that could be worn like a costume on Halloween, but accurately providing a warning that if interacting all at once, perhaps the role of the judge should wait to sort the ideas presented instead of eliminating them.

In a way Johns is a good example of the polar differences between scientists and artists, with information science providing solutions to needs looking for something one doesn’t know or have and Johns ‘something’ becoming something else based on “things the mind already knows. ”

Mountford ends advising interface designers to live in the present and future, anticipating the challenges for designers in new ways to use computers having suggested prototyping models, and these several techniques that are in wide use today.

Life too far in the future isn’t always economically feasible, but combining with role playing should help software projects remain practical and satisfying for those of us who enjoy building successful information tools and toys, or just imagineering we are. I feel the analysis is especially accurate as far as customizable user interface design goes.

Jasper Johns sketchbook, page 42 from 1963–1964 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20001218/danto/2

Quote obtained Oct 31, 2006 from http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/john/hd_john.htm