Why we should empower our students to redesign everything

What are wicked problems? And why are students the key to solving them? Back in 1973, the design theorist Horst Rittel introduced this catchy term, defining wicked problems as those that are “ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision-makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing”.

Well, we certainly have some of them in our world right now, and seemingly more are occurring each day: COVID-19. Climate change. Social and economic disparity. Injustice. Insecurity. Waste and famine. Homelessness. And more. All are chronic issues that gain fleeting public attention only to be buried under the next, seemingly more concerning issue.

First, we had fears of lead in water, eclipsed by PFAS in water, and now microplastics in water, food and the air. Concern over air pollution has yielded to news of soil depletion and both are known to cause chronic disease and hunger.

So much is at critical mass today. These intertwined predicaments demand new, better ways to manage multiple interconnected global issues simultaneously.

We need wicked problem-solvers. We need inspired, human-centred visionaries with wild imaginations who are willing to reach across the boundaries that divide us. We need leaders who recognise innovation as a group endeavour, as a global collaboration of varied perspectives, insights and disciplines.

Heroic individuals, we’ve come to realise, may not be enough.

Academics leading the way

Inherent talents aside, recent research shows that wicked problem-solvers are cultivated through training and experience. These ideas trace back to David Kelley’s seminal work at Stanford University in the 1990s, when he first began the transdisciplinary approaches that informed his budding business, IDEO.

Kelley’s influence spread to many innovators, including Nathan Shedroff, founder and chair of the groundbreaking MBA in Design Strategy programme at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, which prepared a new generation of leaders who saw ways to make the world more profitable, sustainable, ethical and truly meaningful by uniting the perspectives of both design and systems thinking.

Carrying the torch today are educators like Sara Hendren at Olin College of Engineering, who has translated these approaches to social equity and disability studies, leading to new ideas in universal design and accessibility.

These successes explain why more organisations and schools around the world are turning to design thinking to help people become adept at tackling problems through an immersive, collaborative and iterative creative process.

And that’s what led our college to ask how we might empower our students in this same way. So, how can we help the creative professionals of tomorrow become the transdisciplinary, whole-systems design thinking collaborators our future so desperately needs?

The need for diverse, international teams

To take on today’s most daunting wicked problems, students need the courage to challenge the silos and status quo of corporations and institutions. They need to embrace expanded, integrated, diverse teams – the only kind able to respond effectively and inclusively to global system disruptors like pandemics, climate change and social inequity.

Above all, they need to believe in the power of design. At Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University, and in our international student design competition, Wege Prize, we challenge students from around the world to ask (and seek answers to) questions like, how can design drive better decisions around how we source, assemble, use and discard materials?

How can design change the mindset of business and industry? How can we evolve from the extractive and linear models we know so well to new thinking that’s restorative and circular, focused on building economic, natural and social capital?

And further, how can this same circular model transform the way we serve others? Reduce externalities imposed on the consumer? Extend the life cycles of products? Expand access through technology or create entirely new markets?

Actively interrogating these questions through the design thinking process yields powerful experiential learning opportunities, and equally powerful results.

In the Wege Prize, students choose a wicked problem to solve and immerse themselves in it – researching the surrounding context, connecting with community and industry stakeholders, interrogating existing solutions and exploring opportunities for innovation.

Their ideas are then grown through a multi-phase progression in which direct feedback from subject matter experts encourages iteration and provides critical outside perspective and mentorship.

What results is not just tangible and actionable solutions, but students who emerge empowered to carry a new way of seeing, thinking and working out into the world. In whatever area or industry they enter upon graduation, they’re poised to be the change agents who can help us normalise the mindset of transdisciplinary collaboration and whole systems thinking that so much depends on.

Past Wege Prize winners include multinational, multidisciplinary teams that have devised an equitable online platform enabling indigenous communities in Mexico to connect their sustainable ecotourism initiatives to the global marketplace. Another memorable winner is fostering resilient agricultural systems in rural India by making big data accessible to small farmers. Then there’s the on-site waste treatment system a team conceived for hospitals that reduces environmental impact while optimising potential for resource recovery.

Redesign everything

In her foreword to her colleague Ken Webster’s book The Circular Economy: A wealth of flows, Ellen MacArthur describes the circular economy as “a regenerative model, able to decouple economic development from the consumption of finite resources”.

Which is to say, everything has to be redesigned. And that may seem like a wicked problem, but it’s actually the opportunity of a lifetime.

Wege Prize winners show how the circular economy can be a game-changer for many wicked problems. Among the best examples is our latest winner, a team of students from Uganda. Bridging chemistry, engineering and commerce, they leveraged one wicked problem – the threat to freshwater resources posed by the highly invasive water hyacinth – to address another: our crippling dependency on single-use, petroleum-based plastic.

Their innovative bioplastic made from water hyacinth is entirely compostable and their production process uses a replicable and scalable model, revealing enormous potential to help solve two highly complex, systemic challenges.

Also key to teams’ success in the Wege Prize is the competition’s global framework. By inspiring teams to work across cultural, institutional and disciplinary boundaries, we’re able to radically expand the perspective they bring to the problem-solving process.

If design is, as sustainability innovator William McDonough has said, “the first signal of human intention”, educators and mentors must consider the signal we’re sending to the next generation. If we can’t push through the cycle of fatigue, fear and divisiveness we’ve seemingly resigned ourselves to, if we can’t be willing to collaborate across continents, diversify our perspectives and move from an attitude of “Get it right the first time” to one of “Let’s try it now”, then I fear we’re signalling defeat.

Bill Gates has said he’ll fund factories for seven possible COVID-19 vaccines, even if only two at most show promise. And he’s right. We no longer have the luxury of gambling on one idea at a time, hoping we choose the right answer. We need risk-takers willing to invest in multiple ideas simultaneously so that we can arrive sooner at solutions that don’t just work for some, but for all.

Let’s start by putting our money on our students. Let’s bet that if we lift them up to become professionals who can create value without compromising our environment, our culture, our health or our human rights, we won’t ever have to settle for ‘normal’ again.

Let’s help them build something better instead.

Gayle DeBruyn MM, IIDA, LEED-AP, is a professor and sustainability officer at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD), where she helps organise the Wege Prize, an international design competition that inspires college and university students around the world to collaborate across institutional, disciplinary and cultural boundaries to solve complex, ‘wicked’ problems and redesign the way economies work. DeBruyn is chair of the collaborative design and furniture/design studies programmes at KCAD; past president of the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum; a board member of the Alliance for Environmental Sustainability; and an active member of the United Nations University Regional Center of Expertise advisory committee for the City of Grand Rapids, the leadership committee for the Community Collaboration on Climate Change and the West Michigan chapter of the US Green Building Council.