Healthcare. Global Warming. Terrorism. Food Justice. Poverty. The 21st century is rife with multi-causal, socio-culturally complex issues where a true-or-false rationale is disingenuous, unproductive, and even detrimental.
These issues are known as “wicked problems.” Applied as a verb, design can help us deconstruct and respond to the most challenging “wicked problems” of our time.
Through deep collaboration with our constituents, stakeholders, and partners from the corporate and non-profit sectors, integrative designers in the Stamps MDes program address wicked problems through hands-on, real-world projects. With its project-based curriculum, the Stamps MDes program erases traditional boundaries between design research and design practice to create a new process-oriented curriculum.
