Researching Wicked Problems
Transition Design for Forest Health Watch
Context
As part of a directed research group project through the HCDE program at the University of Washington, me and a team of three other undergraduate students conducted extensive research to create a vision 50 years into the future for Forest Health Watch.
This vision can be used by the organization to guide their next steps and better understand the changes to expect and plan for.
Forest Health Watch
Forest Health Watch is a local PNW organization that uses community science research to maintain healthy urban and rural forests. They have a variety of community centered initiatives to study and mitigate the factors that threaten the health of our forests.
Transition Design
The purpose of our DRG was to better understand the Transition Design framework.
Transition design is a genre of design thinking originated at Carnegie Melon University.
Transition design is a transdisciplinary approach for addressing the many ‘wicked’ problems confronting 21st-century societies, such as climate change, forced migration, and political and social polarization"
(Carnegie Mellon University, n.d.).
Carnegie Mellon University (n.d.) About Transition Design. Available at: https://transitiondesignseminarcmu.(Accessed: 8 June 2023).
Irwin, T. (2015) ‘Transition design: A proposal for a new area of design practice, study, and research’, Design and Culture, 7(2), pp. 229–246.
Transition Designer
Learning this framework was a shaping moment for me as a researcher and designer, it takes a step further than typical design thinking. In all my design work I use this type of thinking to be more conscience of sustainabilty and the systems I am designing into.
STEEP analysis
The first step of the transition design approach is to conduct multi-dimensional research on the topic. One method of doing this was STEEP analysis. This method allowed me to practice systems thinking and focus on the many layers of society.
We researched key pieces of evidence of Forest Health Watch's current struggles and signals through a variety of sources. Each of the signals we found were sorted into Socio-cultural, technology, environmental, economic, and political signals and displayed in a affinity map we created as a group.
This was a very collaborative team and we discussed each symbol before adding to the affinity map. In this group I was focused on learning from my peers as it was an early step in my HCDE career. Most of my reserach was on current Forest Health Watch initiatives and research on economic/social disparities between acccess to trees, biosurvaillence technology, and environmental threats to forests.
This was an essential brainstorming tool that allowed me to gain a better grasp on this extremely broad and complex issue.
One of the underlying questions that I hoped to uncover through this research was to understand the nature of why community engagement is so hard. Economic disparaties and a lack of awareness and connection to nature was a glaring signal to me.
Signals, Trends, and Drivers
In order to make sense of the multilayered and complex information we found through STEEP analysis, we sorted our findings into Signals, Trends, and Drivers.
The findings we had previously were signals that guide trends, while drivers are large themes that are the main factors that make up the wicked problem.
The 3 “drivers” I found to have a large impact on Forest Health Watch in the future were:
Climate Change
Environmental changes brought on by climate change will have a detrimental effect on PNW forests and need to be mitigated in order to be resilient in the distant future.
Community Involvement
A key aspect of Forest Health Watch’s organization is it’s reliance on community involvement to assist in the protection of forests.
Mechanization
We anticipate huge strides in technology over the next 50 years. This has the potential to help local forests, or hurt them. In order to best adapt, Forest Health Watch needs to use mechanization to their advantage by utilizing new technologies and advancing the science in the forest protection space.
The Wicked Problem
Integrating diverse local communities into sustainable forest management to bolster resilience against climate change impacts, ensuring both the preservation of biodiversity and the enhancement of ecosystem services vital for global environmental health and community well-being.
The sentence above is the definition of the "Wicked Problem" that Forest Health Watch has to face and the guiding question that our team aimed to solve as we crafted our vision of 2050. We based this definition off of our previous research.
Codesign Workshop
Me and my teammates at our co-design session!
To gain more insights I planned and conducted a co-design workshop session with six undergraduate students as participants.
Goals of workshop:
deeper participants understanding of forest health issues through role-play and discussion
Foster a connection between personal actions and broader environmental impacts
Stimulate empathy and insight into diverse perspectives on forest management and climate change.
Format of workshop:
Ice breaker
Intro to Wicked Problem
Role play card game.
Reflective discussion of personal views and takeaways about forest health and climate change.
Takeaways:
Students had a lot of unique insights into the complexities of the environment and forest health.
There is tangible passion and motivation among students for environmental causes.
Students are lacking spaces to discuss concerns about the environment and want more opportunities to discuss these issues and help solve them.
The Vision:
To wrap up the research portion of this project I finally defined the vision for the future that Forest Health Watch should work in the present to acheive.
Integrating local communities into sustainable forest management enhance resilience to climate change, preserves biodiversity, and improves ecosystem services. In 50 years this community action will be second nature, the environment will be an integral part of all aspects of life, from design, to urban planning, so that all actions revolve around making sustainable decisions that benefit the community.
2050 looks like:
Utilizing more spaces for nature
Bringing more nature to everyone’s daily lives
The environment is in the forefront of everyone mind.
Cultivating a lifelong appreciation and relationship with nature from a young age through increased environmental learning in K-12 education.
Design, urban planning, individual action all revolves around making the best decision to ensure sustainability and community well being.
The way to tackle the issues that we found in STEEP analysis such as diminishing biodiversity, diseases effecting trees, and inequal access to nature spaces, was to create a mutally beneficial relationship between communities and forests.
Educating youth and continuously engaging communities with environmental learning creates spaces for all members of the community to engage in sustainable pro-forest behaviors.
Climate change is a direct threat to the health of forests and all communities in the PNW will feel the effects by 2050, it is up to all of us to combat these and protect the forests that protect us.
Reflection:
This process was one of my first tastes of not only the transition design framework but also design thinking in general. The extensive research I conducted for this project taught me the importance of thinking deeply about the systems in which organizations such as Forest Health Watch, and all other companies exist. It was eye opening to think about how many layers go into every portion of society.
I also learned about the competencies that are involved in the design of large-scale social transformation.
Systems thinking:
Thinking about all of the factors and interactions that contribute to a possible outcome. You must dig deeper to understand more than just the tip of the iceberg.
Sustainable thinking:
Considering the environmental consequences should be one of the most important factors of any design decision. Whether you are designing for 50 years into the future or one second, the earth should be considered as a major stakeholder.
The types of problems facing our world today such as climate change, are not simple. Finding solutions is not the most important task for a designer and researcher. It is important to gain an understanding of the layers of the issue because you cannot solve a problem you don't fully understand.
Through the guidance of HCDE faculty Tyler Fox and Micheal Passer I was able to slow down my instincts to find solutions before understanding the issue which helped to gain a deeper understanding of the Wicked Problem.
This project shaped me as a researcher and designer and made me a much more thoughtful designer.