Design’s Problems • Doubleshot

Something that predictably comes up at the beginning of any design project is the “problem.” What problem are we trying to solve? Who has this problem? What are the other constituent problems of their lives, and how does this one fit with the other ones?

Recently, this has been tickling my brain—I’ve started and abandoned several posts for Interface Cafe about problematics in the design process. Specifically, I want to understand what effect this framing actually has on the work. Are there alternative models, focused on opening possibilities, facilitating actions or development in users, that aren’t centered on problems?

While I turned this over again in my head, Jarrett Fuller, assistant professor of graphic and experience design at North Carolina State University and host of Scratching the Surface published his new essay on Fast Co. pointing out that, beyond the problematics of the sprint, design has its own problems.

These problems are what inspired this Doubleshot. Let’s get started.