Empowering change for future-making: Developing agency by framing wicked problems through design
Introduction
As the world and its challenges are becoming more complex (or wicked, as per (Rittel & Webber, 1973), several higher education institutions (HEIs) have been transforming their curricula in order to prepare their students to live and operate in a world that is constantly in flux (Austen, 2012, García-Morales et al., 2020, Hermann and Bossle, 2020, Tasdemir and Gazo, 2020). For instance, HEIs can sign the SDG Accord (n.d.) to commit to addressing the Sustainable Development Goals, and similarly the RRBM network (n.d.) encourages business schools to support responsible research.
In their editorial, Király and Géring (2019) go even further by advocating for a more holistic transformation of higher education institutions towards more active agency in the surrounding society. Similarly, Rieckmann (2012) calls for a more future-oriented attitude in higher education that provides students with tools and capabilities to tackle wicked problems. Echoing these calls to transform higher education, the undertone seems to be that higher education should prepare students to ask the right questions instead of finding answers to existing questions (see also (Björklund, 2013; Liu & Maas, 2021; Osborne et al., 2021); namely, to develop their competency for systemic thinking as well as dealing with complexity (in line with Rieckmann (2012)).
As we are dealing with multiple potential futures with often conflicting interests, students and practitioners alike need to develop a more nuanced understanding of how to identify problems today for a more emancipatory future-making (Garcia & Gaziulusoy, 2021). Against this backdrop, design has been identified as a potential vehicle for equipping the students with a future-making mindset and a shared problem-solving logic. This leverages on design’s innate qualities that are human-centered, collaborative, and future-oriented (Bason, 2010, Hyvärinen et al., 2015, Junginger and Sangiorgi, 2009, Lee et al., 2018). Given that future is not something given but actively created, design’s inherent focus on discovering problems and dealing with ambiguity (Dunne & Martin, 2006) has been identified as a potential means for instilling students with an agentic relationship towards their surroundings as focus shifts from following educators’ instructions and exploring well-defined problems to creating opportunities (see e.g., (Garbuio et al., 2018; Sarooghi et al., 2019). However, whilst design education is gaining currency in higher education institutions as a means to proposing pathways for solving major societal and environmental challenges (Buhl et al., 2019, Kimbell, 2011), we need to develop greater insight on how design contributes towards individuals developing capacities for envisioning potential futures through problem framing.
To bridge this gap, and in line with Björklund (2013) concerns regarding students’ passiveness, this paper looks at elements that support (or hinder) students developing active agency when it comes to framing and identifying problems. By taking the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as an example of wicked or ill-defined problems in a business school context (in line with Hill (1998), this paper explores how a multidisciplinary student body utilized design-driven methodologies to frame complex problems and offer initial pathways forward during a three-week intensive course (c.f. (Sarooghi et al., 2019). Therefore, we ask the following research questions:
How do students draw on design to frame problems in today’s society?
How does problem framing contribute to students’ agency in envisioning desirable futures?
With this study, we contribute to a crucial body of knowledge that weaves together design and futures studies (e.g., (Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2016; Garcia & Gaziulusoy, 2021) by focusing on the problem-finding and concept development phases of a design process (e.g., (Dorst & Cross, 2001). More specifically, findings from this study provide a complementary standpoint to futures consciousness (e.g., (Ahvenharju et al., 2018; Ahvenharju et al., 2021) by looking at how designerly ways of exploring problems here-now can help in transitioning from linear problem-solving to navigating ambiguous, ill-defined problems and solutions that bridge the present and the future. We investigate how a multidisciplinary student body utilizes design to frame problems in the surrounding society and proposes future-oriented solutions to them. To this end, we draw on agency theory (Bandura, 2006, Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, Meyer and Jepperson, 2000) to theorize how agency to envision futures develops through engaging in problem framing. The purpose in this paper is not to evaluate the outcomes of problem framing per se, but instead to understand how students explore and frame problems with future implications in mind.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows: we will review relevant literature on agency and futures and design education, after which we introduce the methodology devised for this paper. Findings will be presented and discussed afterwards, and we conclude by summarizing the findings, discussing the limitations, as well as offering avenues for future research.
Section snippets
Literature review: Design agency and competencies
Drawing on agency theory (Bandura, 2006, Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, Meyer and Jepperson, 2000), our aim in this paper is to contribute to discussions on how design is being utilized to frame problems with future implications (e.g., (Björklund, 2013; Dorst & Cross, 2001; Kim & Strimel, 2020). Acknowledging that there are numerous branches and sub-disciplines of design (e.g., (Buchanan, 1992), in this paper we loosely follow Dunne and Raby (2013) speculative design that emphasizes design as
Research context
IDBM Challenge was a three-week intensive course offered at Aalto University’s multidisciplinary International Design Business Management graduate program. Bringing together graduate students from design, business, technology, and humanities; learning outcomes for this course were two-fold: first, to help the students understand how to work in interdisciplinary teams, and second, to provide the students with a basic understanding on how design can act as a catalyst for social change. Each team
Findings: The six aspects of emerging agency
Design is an activity aimed at improving or transmuting the world (Dunne and Raby, 2013, Simon, 1969) and that entails a continuous dialog between thinking and doing (Schön, 1983). Our findings suggest that future-oriented problem framing is dependent on the following aspects: combining theory and practice, engaging with the world and its complexities, reciprocal trust in design teams, self-reflection, changing perspectives, and emotional investment. These aspects form a model where agency,
Synthesizing the aspects: Design and agency intertwined
During the course of this paper, we have explored how a multidisciplinary student body frames societal and environmental problems through design and with a focus on future implications. Through the model and its six aspects discussed above, the findings reported in this study contribute to discussions on how design can serve as a catalyst in promoting students’ development of agency in envisioning desirable futures (see also (Kemp, 2017). As Kemp (2017) posits, design can be understood as “the
Conclusion: Developing future-oriented design pedagogies for the new world
Our point of departure in this paper has been how a multidisciplinary student body moves from replicating design towards autonomously applying it to frame societal and environmental problems with future implications in mind. This framing is in line with Jonassen et al. (2006) and Björklund (2013) who call for changes in design (engineering) education to better prepare the students to enter working life, and with Alexiou and Zamenopoulos (2008) and Celaschi and Celi (2015) who have explored
Funding
This work was financially supported by the Aalto Online Learning Strategic Initiative, Finland.
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