Visualizations for Design Thinking

The paper describes the trends to meta organizations and the complex or wicked systems they create. Wicked or complex problems now increasingly require ways other than the analytical approaches used in most design methodologies. Wicked problems are often ill-defined and requirements emerge from a wider vision rather than being predefined. Such emergence requires continuous innovation to quickly provide solutions as design proceeds. Design thinking is one approach to do this. This paper describes how design thinking can be used to address wicked problems and its relationship to project development. Design thinking focuses on ways to encourage innovation and also suggests the visualizations that provide the heuristics to develop ideas as design proceeds. The visualizations provide design frames that enable designers to see systems from different perspectives. The paper identifies three kinds of visualizations, perspectives, system of systems and building blocks and compares them against the unique criteria needed to address wicked problems