Design Is a Wicked Problem

I have found in my career over and over that whenever you have a complex problem the first pass at design is rarely the correct. Every time you start a complex project and design a user interface prototype it changes several times before a usable design seems to emerge. Usually at the end of a project you look back at the initial design and laugh!

Inevitably a good design usually happens through showing the customer the design and working through the problems and gaining understanding through communication and reviewing the user interface with the customer.

I stumbled upon this quote today that accurately describes what I have learned.

This paradox implies, essentially, that you have to solve the problem once in order to clearly define it and then solve it again to create a solution that works. This process has been motherhood and apple pie in software development for decades (Peters and Tripp 1976).