Introduction to the Locales Framework

Abstract

Wicked problem situations involve creative unpredictable people interacting in and with complex and dynamic contexts involving social, organisational, physical, and technical dimensions. These interactions and inter-dependent contexts are not amenable to the simplifying design abstractions that have served systems engineering well in the past, approaches that are more suitable to where problems can be fully articulated and solutions verified as right or wrong. This is not the case with wicked problems. Yet while ethnography and similar qualitative techniques seem better able to account for the complexity of wicked problem situations, they entail a different set of problems to do with communication between understanding and designing. And while a metaphor of space seems to be better than an action-based approach for the design of collaborative systems that address wicked problem situations (because we are all familiar with space and actions do not need to be specified a priori), these too are proving problematic.