The Logic of the Design Problem:

A Dialectical Approach
Stephen J. Beckett

The Logic of the Design Problem

Across the literature of design thinking, the “design problem”
represents a fundamental object of concern, and its complex char-
acter frequently plays a key role in marking design’s difference
from art or science, on the basis that the design problem is of a
different nature to problems confronted in those fields. This argu-
ment is not made on the basis of the content of the design problem
(a design problem is not defined as such because it deals with
graphics, fashion, etc.) but on the basis of its logical structure—that
is, the relation between problem and solution, and the means by
which this solution is obtained. But what is the nature of this logi-
cal structure?
Arguments regarding structure make up some of the earli-
est texts in the design-thinking canon.1 Herbert Simon’s The Sci-
ences of the Artificial, which takes a broad view of design as that
which is “concerned with how things ought to be,”2 presents design
problems as fundamentally rational in nature but whose rational-
ity can be obscured by their framing. For Simon, design problems
are essentially well defined; their intractability derives from the
1 For a recent survey of the canon, see
Lucy Kimbell, “Rethinking Design difficulty the problem solver may have in properly identifying the
Thinking: Part I,” Design and Culture 3, problem. The key to solving such problems is “focusing on the par-
no. 3 (2015): 285–306, and Lucy Kimbell, ticular features of the situation that are relevant to the problem,
“Rethinking Design Thinking: Part II,” then building a problem space containing these features but omit-
Design and Culture 4, no. 2 (2016):
ting the irrelevant ones.”3
129–48.
2 Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Richard Buchanan has argued that design problems are not
Artificial (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, well defined but indeterminable or “wicked.” He draws on a 1973
1996), 4. paper by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber that classifies as
3 Simon, Sciences of the Artificial, 109. “wicked” any problem whose complexity prevents its formulation
Simon later conceded that some
in simple terms and its solution by propositional or programmatic
problems were “ill-structured,” but
maintained that such problems were means.4 He argues that design problems meet this designation
essentially rational at the core. See because the content of design is unlimited: “The subject matter of
Herbert A. Simon, “The Structure of design is potentially universal in scope, because design thinking
Ill-Structured Problems,” Artificial may be applied to any area of human experience.” In proposing a
Intelligence 4 (1973): 181–201.
solution to a problem, a designer must “discover or invent a partic-
4 Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber,
“Dilemmas of a General Theory of ular subject out of the problems and issues of specific circum-
Planning,” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): stances,”5 and therefore any solution proposed is as much an
155–69. argument for its own applicability as it is a logical solution to the
5 Richard Buchanan, “Wicked Problems problem, implying a rhetorical rather than a logical relation.
in Design Thinking,” Design Issues 8,
no. 2 (Spring 1992): 16.
© 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
doi: 10.1162/DESI_a_00470 DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017 5
 More recent theories of problem solving in design have
abandoned the notion of problem and solution as discrete phases
of a linear process and instead posit a model of design which is “an
iterative interplay to ‘fix’ a problem from the problem space and to
‘search’ plausible solutions from the corresponding solution
space.”6 Accordingly, there is no single linear movement from prob-
lem and solution but the simultaneous co-development of both:
As the design progresses the designer learns more about
possible problem and solution structures as new aspects
of the situation become apparent and the inconsistencies
inherent in the formulation of the problem are revealed.
As a result, designers gain new insights into the problem
(and the solution) which ultimately result in the formation
of a new view; the problem and the solution are redefined.7

Kees Dorst pursues this angle further, suggesting that if the design
problem and design solution co-evolve during the design process,
then the problem as such never truly exists in any objective sense
and instead ought to be considered an “amalgamation of different
problems centered on the basic challenge described in the design
brief.”8 Dorst suggests that we think instead of the design scenario
as a paradox: a description of the problem situation in which “all
the statements…are true or valid, but they cannot be combined.”9
By this account, the design problem consists not of the statements
of the design paradox but the logical aporia around which the par-
adox is structured. The paradox is the essence of the “stuckness” of
the situation—a formal inconsistency that must be evinced
through the exploration of its content. However, this reformulation
of the problem can serve as the basis for its resolution: “The cre-
ation of solutions to a paradoxical design situation often requires
6 Mary Lou Maher, Josiah Poon, and Sylvie the development and creative redefinition of that situation.”10 In
Boulanger, “Formalising Design Explora-
other words, the pursuit of the design problem coincides with the
tion as Co-Evolution,” in Advances in For-
mal Design Methods for CAD, ed. John S. discovery of its solution. Precisely how this discovery is achieved
Gero (Dordrecht: Springer, 1996), 3. is not made clear.
7 Brian Logan and Tim Smithers, “Creativity Other approaches have stressed the conversational nature of
and Design as Exploration,” in Modelling the design process—not a linear logical progression but a circular
Creativity and Knowledge-Based Creative
process of discursive exchange, “usually held via a medium such
Design, ed. John S. Gero and Mary Lou
Maher (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, [as] a paper and pencil, with an other (either an ‘actual’ other or
1993): 145. oneself acting as an other) as the conversational partner.”11 Nigel
8 Kees Dorst, “Design Problems and Cross has observed that this conversational process proceeds “by
Design Paradoxes,” Design Issues 22, oscillating between subsolution and subproblem areas, as well as
no. 3 (Summer 2006): 11.
by decomposing the problem and combining subsolutions.” This
9 Ibid., 14.
10 Ibid. process aims at “the articulation of an opposite concept […] which
11 Ranulph Glanville, “Researching Design enables the models to be mapped onto each other.”12
and Designing Research,” Design Issues
15, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 88.
12 Nigel Cross, “Descriptive Models of
Creative Design: Application to an Exam-
ple,” Design Studies 18 (1997): 439.

6 DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017

 Elsewhere, Dorst and Cross have argued that the relation
between design problem and solution relies on a speculative form
of reasoning called abduction,13 whereby undetermined data can be
temporarily filled out with reasonable assumptions to advance a
line of inquiry or form a hypothesis. Designers must rely on
abductive reasoning because “design initiates novel forms,”14 and
thus what is inferred in a proposed solution cannot be tested until
that form exists. Once a successful solution has taken form, it will
prove that those assumptions were correct and the solution has
therefore been reasonably inferred from its problem. As attractive
as this line of argument is, it is problematic in that it suggests that
some degree of logical necessity exists in the relationship of a
“good” solution to a design problem. But because this necessity
can only be determined retroactively, this conclusion is unsound,
for if there were a necessary relation between problem and solu-
tion, no abductive inference would have been needed to uncover
it. In effect, the abductive explanation offers a means of side-
stepping the paradox to avoid having to untangle it. It is thus
descriptive of the process rather than analytic, as the paradox
still remains.
A difficulty for theorizing the design process appears to
lie in discerning the logic of the relation of the design problem to
the design solution. Descriptive models may bear a much closer
resemblance to the way designers actually work, but fail to abstract
the logic of the process, while Simon’s positivist model abstracts
beyond actual practice. The co-evolutionary model moves closer to
experience, but the logical relation of problem and solution with-
in it remains problematic—hence Dorst resorts to a phenom-
enological “bracketing” of the design problem as a concept, so
that it can be discussed while temporarily disavowing its paradox-
ical nature.15
The cause of the paradox is both temporal and formal. It
is temporal because common sense tells us that a problem must
precede its solution, just as a cause must precede its effect. How-
ever, practice repeatedly shows us that a design problem does not
appear to be properly determined until the determination of its
solution. It is formal because common sense tells us that a solution
must be deduced from its problem, just as a conclusion must be
deduced from its premises. However, the design solution appears
to determine the premises from which it is deduced, suggesting
that it is logically invalid. Nevertheless, the teleological nature of
13 Kees Dorst, “The Nature of Design Think-
the design scenario necessitates the problem–solution structure.
ing,” Proceedings of the 8th Design
Thinking Research Symposium (DTRS8),
Sydney, October 19–20, 2010: 131–39.
14 Nigel Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing
(London: Springer, 2006), 17.
15 See Kees Dorst, “Design Problems and
Design Paradoxes,” Design Issues 22, no.
3 (Summer 2006): 4–17.

DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017 7

 How are we to conceive the logic of the design scenario in
a way that resolves these temporal and formal paradoxes without
recourse to either a reductive rational model or the bracketing of
the design problem? Because these paradoxes are the result of
trying to perceive the design problem and its solution as indepen-
dent entities whose logical relation must be deduced, perhaps we
should think instead of problem and solution as aspects of a single
concept. To achieve this, it is my suggestion is that we turn to the
work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, specifically his dialectical
system of logic.
I argue that the best way to approach the logic of the design
problem is dialectically; that is, by viewing the design problem
and its solution as moments of a concept undergoing a dialectical
process. As I attempt to demonstrate, the logic of the dialectic as
Hegel presents it not only disarms the temporal and formal para-
doxes of the design problem as we currently understand it but also
helps us more fully perceive the nature and extent of the designer’s
subjective intervention into the design scenario—how the
designer, in working through a design problem, is effecting a for-
mal reconfiguration of its content. I will proceed first by discuss-
ing the dialectic itself, and then by examining in what sense the
design process is dialectical, and finally by looking at what it is
that makes the designer a dialectical thinker.

Why Dialectical?
Although the term dialectic has been used in philosophy since Plato
(generally to mean a process of rationally debating opposing posi-
tions), it was not until Hegel developed his philosophical system
(primarily in Phenomenology of Spirit, first published in 1807, and
Science of Logic,16 published between 1812 and 1816), that the term
has applied to some fundamental quality of the movement of
thought and knowledge and the interaction of their form and con-
tent. A common misunderstanding of the dialectic involves the tri-
adic structure of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, according to which
the progress of ideas and the progress of history proceed through
the opposition of one concept—the thesis—to its logical counter-
part—the antithesis—which eventually resolve into some com-
16 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, promise position—the synthesis. This may be a neat model for the
trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford Univer- representation of progress through rational reduction but as a sys-
sity Press, 1977); G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s tem that unites two positive but contradictory entities, it finds no
Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (New like in Hegel’s work. Though the form of the dialectic as Hegel
York: Humanity Books, 1969).
deploys it is typically (though not exclusively) triadic, it does not
17 Where I intend a term to be understood
in a specifically Hegelian sense, I have
comprise three discrete concepts. Instead, Hegel describes these
included Hegel’s original terminology. dialectical forms as moments or stages (Momente17) through which
This will also help avoid any confusion a single concept (Begriff) passes—partial aspects of a conceptual
where one term has been rendered in a whole. Because each moment of the dialectic is immanent to its
number of different ways in published
translations, for example, notion and con-
cept for Begriff.

8 DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017

concept—the antithesis, for example being the inevitable negative
result of the determination of the thesis—it is inaccurate to con-
ceive the dialectic as a model whereby two externally opposed
ideas meet and do battle. The antithesis has to emerge from the
thesis; more accurately, both thesis and antithesis emerge simulta-
neously—determining the thesis, positing its positive content, nec-
essarily requires the positing of its antithesis as its negation,
against which it is determined. Positing “being,” for example, nec-
essarily requires positing “nothingness” as its negation, against
which being can be defined: both being and nothingness are there-
fore aspects—or “moments”—of the same concept.
The dialectical movement, then, is a movement of contradic-
tion through negation. When the positive content of the concept is
determined (i.e., it is abstracted as a distinct object of thought), its
negation is posited as that against which it is defined. This is a
formal condition of its determination as a concept: it cannot be
determined without also being negated. But this negation remains
part of the concept. It does not create another concept that is the
negation of the first; rather, its negation is a condition of its becom-
ing a concept, and cannot be separated from it. It is this part of the
process that can properly be called dialectical, in the sense that the
term denotes a logical process of reasoning through contradiction.
But this splitting that is caused by the concept’s determination
faces a countermovement through which the negation is realized.
The movement that reconnects these contradictory terms is specula-
tive, and in this moment this formal division is reinternalized and
overcome.
Hegel describes the speculative movement using the Ger-
man verb aufheben, which conveys a range of meanings: to raise up,
to preserve, to overcome, and also to cancel and to abolish. The
word is usually translated into English as the obscure verb sublate,
and although this term lacks the breadth of meaning of its German
counterpart, it diffuses the reductive simplicity of the term synthe-
sis, which suggests a contradiction resolved and an antagonism
undone. At the third moment of the triad, the synthesis does not
unify the thesis and antithesis into a new and stable concept that
has been shorn of its internal contradictions but designates the
concept such that it is reconceived in light of the recognition of this
constitutive contradiction. In other words, the synthesis is purely a
formal movement that reconfigures preexisting content. Nothing is
added in this moment of synthesis, and nothing is taken away.
Each moment is immanent to the concept, and the movement from
moment to moment ought not be considered a temporal succession,
but the recognition of aspects of the concept itself.

DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017 9

 The movement of the dialectic is not self-propelled (concepts
do not think themselves) but the result of the active involvement of
a thinking subject. In determining the concept—that is, abstracting
a concept from the content of the understanding—the subject inev-
itably impels the concept’s formal movement (indeed, in Hegel’s
use of it, the term concept more closely describes the subjective
experience of thinking than an independent, objective idea), and
this subjective quality of the dialectic is what helps us recognize its
presence in the design process. In the design scenario (the situa-
tion wherein a designer is required to offer a solution to a design
problem), the designer’s intervention is formal: she reconfigures
the “stuck” content of the scenario without adding content of her
own, and through her active intervention into the situation, this
formal reconfiguration of the content is achieved. Conceiving the
design scenario dialectically allows us to understand more clearly
how this formal reconfiguration is achieved and the part the
designer plays in achieving it.
More importantly, a dialectical reading of the design sce-
nario diffuses its formal and temporal paradox, taking with it the
need to call on the problematic concept of abductive reasoning,18
which was only ever summoned to bridge the gap opened up by
the paradox. Although abduction may remain effective insofar as it
is descriptive of the subjective experience of the design process,
the dialectical reading helps explain the underlying logical pas-
sage from problem to solution by presenting both as moments of
the same concept that are revealed as the concept is thought
through (nachgedacht)19 by the designer.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty in achieving a dialectical
reading of the design scenario comes from the logic of the dialectic
itself—specifically, the difficulty in grasping this logic and recog-
nizing its distance from conventional reasoning, which tends to
frustrate simple exegesis. I have endeavored to avoid as much
Hegelese as is reasonable, but must concede some fallibility to the
tortuousness that inevitably infects any attempt to consider a con-
cept dialectically. But just as a design problem might fail to yield a
rational solution at first pass, so does the dialectic ask for a patient,
open-minded, and reflective consideration.
18 For a summary of the logical arguments
surrounding abductive reasoning, see The Design Problem and Its Negation
Douglas N. Walton, “Abductive, Pre- The first step a designer must take when intervening in a design
sumptive and Plausible Arguments,” scenario is to reduce the situation in all its complexity to a simpler,
Informal Logic 21, no. 2 (2001): 131–69.
thinkable form. This begins the process of determining the design
19 Hegel uses the German prepositional
verb nachdenken (think through, consider) problem.20 However, the design problem (as opposed to the design
to refer to the subject’s act of cognitive scenario) lacks any objective existence; establishing knowledge of
engagement with the concept, which is the problem means establishing the problem as an object of
also the act of determining the concept. thought, or in other words, as a concept (Begriff).
20 “To determine” (bestimmen) in the dia-
lectical sense means “to add features or
qualities to a concept, to distinguish it.”

10 DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017

 The move from the concept as an abstraction of the situa-
tion to the concept specifically as a design problem involves the
introduction of the teleological form. The concept of the situation
already contains its paradox; but the paradox does not constitute a
problem until the teleological inflection is introduced, because that
requires the paradox to be resolved. It is the designer that intro-
duces the teleological form, and it is the designer whose task it is to
seek a solution. The designer therefore opens up a contradiction:
between the problem (the situation as it presently is) and the goal
(the situation as it ought to be)—that is, the situation hulled of its
stuckness. Any determination of one term therefore posits a con-
tradictory determination in the other. Any quality attributed to the
problem (insofar as it is specifically recognized as a property of the
problem and not merely an incidental detail of the situation) neces-
sarily posits that same quality negated in the solution. In addition,
as the ought of the goal situation necessarily designates a scenario
in a possible future (as opposed to the situation as it is in the pres-
ent), it also introduces the quality of temporality as a determina-
tion of the problem. Further determinations of the content of the
problem will be conditioned by this temporality. It is important,
however, that the temporality necessary to the teleological form
not be confused with the actual passage of time. Speaking of the
future is not the same as being in the future, even if the goal sce-
nario appears only to exist in some time yet to come.
The task before the designer now consists in determining
the problem—that is, attributing content to the problem to reveal
its nature. That content may be discovered by speaking to those
affected by the problem, researching similar scenarios, or even
from the designer’s own experience of problems of a similar
nature. From wherever the content may come, however, what
is important to note is that the teleological relation between
the problem and its posited solution (the situation as it ought to
be) requires that any determination made of the problem is
negated in the solution.
The further the problem is determined, the further the
solution is determined. However, this is not a co-evolutionary
process; the problem and solution are not separate entities evolv-
ing together. Rather, they are aspects (or moments) of a single con-
cept. The work of determining the problem is actually a process of
separating the problem and solution by becoming conscious of the
contradiction between an aspect of the situation as it is and the
same aspect reflected in the situation as it ought to be. By the same
token, determining the situation as it ought to be necessarily deter-
mines the situation as it is, as no ought can be determined without
positing a difference in the is. Furthermore, the very concept of the

DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017 11

 situation as problematic could not exist if it were not placed in
contradiction to another situation deemed preferable. The prob-
lem cannot therefore be said to preexist its solution; it is only by
opening a formal space for a solution that the problem comes into
(formal) existence.
In traditional dialectical terms, the problem and the solution
represent the thesis and its antithesis, that is, the abstraction of the
concept and its negation. The negation of the concept is an aspect
of the concept itself and not a separate entity. Determining the con-
cept of being, for example, necessarily posits the determination of
“not nothingness,” and thus nothingness is contained within the
concept of being as its negation and cannot be separated from it.
The design process therefore concerns the simultaneous determi-
nation of problem and solution. This work of determination is
entirely cognitive; any determination of the problem is only a
determination of the concept of the problem. It is also therefore a
subjective process, in that it only occurs as the result of the
designer thinking through the problem.
If the problem and solution are the thesis and antithesis of
the problem-as-concept and emerge through the work of determin-
ing the problem—“filling” its form with content, the question
remains of how their contradiction is resolved and the opposing
terms reunited in a synthesis. The synthesis is not a new concept,
separate from the thesis and antithesis, but a third moment of the
problem-concept, in which the opposition between thesis and
antithesis is sublated (aufgehoben). This moment concerns the nega-
tion of the negation—the negation of the determinations that were
negated through the determination of the thesis. This does not
involve the addition of any further content but the formal recon-
figuration of the content of the thesis. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek
explains, the synthesis “implies the recognition of a pre-existing
state of affairs. The reversal is reduced to the realization that ‘it’s
already like this’—we already have the thing we were looking for;
what we aspire to is already the case.”21 The synthesis of thesis and
antithesis therefore represents a simple change of perspective
through which the solution as antithesis (i.e., as the negation of the
problem-as-concept) is recognized as the solution as such—that
is, the moment at which the designer becomes conscious of the
solution qua solution. Although this moment—which somewhat
coincides with what Omer and Cem Akin call the “Aha!”
response22—may appear to involve the sudden arrival ex nihilo
of some new concept, the change is only a formal shift on con-
21 Slavoj Žižek, The Most Sublime Hysteric:
Hegel with Lacan (Cambridge: Polity tent already present which then comes to consciousness, for no
Press, 2014), 23 (emphasis in original). epiphany arrives without a prior thinking through (nachdenken) of
22 See Ömer Akin and Cem Akin, “Frames the concept.
of Reference in Architectural Design:
Analysing the Hyperacclamation
(A-h-a-!),” Design Studies 17, no. 4
(1996): 341–61.

12 DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017

 In the synthesis, then, the problem and solution remain part
of a single concept because the solution, as such, is a solution to the
problem posited in the concept. The synthesis does not mark some
closure or completion of the contradiction; further determinations
of the problem will be reflected in the solution, and vice versa. Nor
does the synthesis designate the coming-into-being of the solution
in some material form—it is a concept only, and may remain so.
The solution only becomes a concept itself once it exists outside of
the teleological form of the design scenario. Until then, the prob-
lem and solution remain aspects of a single concept.
It is important to recognize that what is being described is
the logic of the design process insofar as design is a cognitive
activity. On a purely physical level, that a design solution could
precede a design problem, or that the two could develop simulta-
neously, is nonsensical. But design cannot be purely physical; it is
by definition a conscious, human, goal-directed activity. By
abstracting the logic of the process and putting aside any notion of
the necessity of a physical result, its dialectical structure is
revealed and consequently, the paradox of the design problem is
illuminated as an effect of perspective. The temporal paradox is
the result of perceiving problem and solution as separate and inde-
pendent entities (which, in a physical sense, they may well be).
However, by recognizing problem and solution as moments of a
single concept, we can see that the supposed temporal distance
between them is an effect only of the teleological form, which tem-
poralizes the solution as a situation-yet-to-come. The formal para-
dox is the result of perceiving the solution as the necessary logical
deduction of the premises uncovered in the problem. However, the
solution is not the conclusion of a ratiocinative process, nor is the
process rational or objective, and any necessity perceived in the
relation of solution to problem is the effect of a formal distortion
that “rereads” the design process post factum as a syllogistic
deduction of a solution from a problem.
Owing to its dialectical structure, the design process is a
subjective activity that can only unfold when the designer actively
commits to thinking through the stuckness of a design scenario. It
is to the nature of this subjective activity that I now turn.

The Designer as Speculative Reader

If the logic of the design process is dialectical, how best are we to
construe the designer’s role within it? If the solution to the prob-
lem emerges as the negation of the problem, it would suggest that
there is some inevitability to the process that renders the design-
er’s part in the process incidental. However, this mischaracterizes

DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017 13

 the problem-as-concept as preexisting the design scenario and
the designer’s engagement with it. While the problem and solu-
tion may determine one another, the attribution of determina-
tions to the problem-as-concept remains the province of the
designer, and it is the means by which the designer achieves this
determination—the way she approaches, reads, and understands
the situation and its stuckness—that distinguishes the designer
from the nondesigner.
A passage from Hegel’s preface to Phenomenology of Spirit
helps illustrate the nature of this distinction. He addresses the
complaint that philosophy is difficult to read—specifically, that “so
much has to be read over and over before it can be understood—a
complaint whose burden is presumed to be quite outrageous, and,
if justified, to admit of no defense.”23 He attributes this difficulty to
the nature of the propositions involved, which he argues are spec-
ulative, as opposed to the ratiocinative propositions of common
sense. The latter species of proposition is easy to grasp because it
involves the simple attribution of determinations to a subject:24
“Usually, the Subject is first made the basis, as the objective fixed
self; thence the necessary movement to the multiplicity of determi-
nations or Predicates proceeds.”25 Thus, in a ratiocinative proposi-
tion, the subject is taken to be a stable, delineated entity to which
qualities can be attributed in an independent, nondialectical man-
ner: a dog has four legs, a tail, and so on.
The speculative proposition, however, offers no such stabil-
ity: “The general nature of the judgement or proposition, which
involves the distinction of Subject and Predicate, is destroyed by
the speculative proposition, and the proposition of identity which
the former becomes contains the counter-thrust against that
subject-predicate relationship.”26 In other words, a speculative
proposition is one in which the predicate immediately turns back
on the subject by positing the essence of the subject instead of a
determination of it. Rather than unfolding in linear fashion, like
the ratiocinative proposition, the logic of the speculative proposi-
tion reflects back on itself, requiring the thinker to think both
terms together: “Thinking therefore loses the firm objective basis it
had in the subject when, in the predicate, it is thrown back on to
the subject, and when, in the predicate, it does not return into itself
but into the subject of the content.”27
The speculative proposition frustrates common sense
because it appears to posit a contradiction, the understanding of
which requires the reader to step back and think the two terms as
23 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 39. one concept. Hegel offers the proposition “God is being” as an
24 Subject here should be primarily example, though for the present task, I suggest the following alter-
understood in the grammatical sense native: “the problem is the solution.”
of the term.
25 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 37.
26 Ibid., 38.
27 Ibid., 39.

14 DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017

 Common sense might balk at such a proposition as nonsen-
sical, and if the proposition were read ratiocinatively, common
sense would have a point: the solution cannot be an attribution of
the problem because problem and solution are separate entities—
each with their own set of characteristics. A speculative reading of
the proposition, on the other hand, requires the reader to think
through the contradiction of problem and solution in its dialecti-
cal-speculative fullness so that the path through it becomes clear.
Philosopher Catherine Malabou suggests that this moment arrives
“when the reader enters into the speculative ordeal constituted by
the relationship between the difference of the reader and the iden-
tity of the text.”28 The reader must be willing, in other words, to
forgo the immediate understanding of the proposition and instead
construct a set of propositions through which it can be understood.
It is an ordeal, a cognitive labor, through which the reader creates
an understanding that transforms both the reader and the proposi-
tion. In the case of the example given (“the problem is the solu-
tion”), this process was unfolded in the previous section.
The difference between speculative and ratiocinative prop-
ositions marks the difference between philosophy and ordinary
reading, for where ordinary reading sees only a senseless and irre-
trievable contradiction, the philosophical reading sees an invita-
tion to engage—to undertake what philosopher Bernard Bourgeois
describes as “literally an adventure calling on the reader’s own
self.”29 This difference finds a parallel in the design scenario. While
the ordinary, ratiocinative reading of the situation conveys only
stuckness and contradiction, the designer discovers something
else: an invitation to venture into the knotted logic of the situation
and construct a different understanding. The designer must take
the decision to think past the initial confusion of the design sce-
nario and commit to putting its content into a new form, and thus
read the situation speculatively. It is an ordeal, a mental labor, in
which the designer must determine the problem and thus its nega-
tion and the synthesis of the two. Finally, she will arrive back
where she started, but now the design scenario will lend itself to a
ratiocinative reading: in the final analysis, problem and solution lie
in linear relation, and the contingency inherent in the subjective
transformation of the scenario appears now to be objective logical
necessity—the solution determined by its premises.
This simple ratiocinative reading of the problem and solu-
tion is only possible because the designer has committed her own
self—her subjective engagement—to a speculative reading of the
design scenario. Once effected, however, no evidence of her cog-
nitive labor remains. From this position of hindsight, it appears
that the logical, rational relation of solution to problem was always
28 Catherine Malabou, The Future of
Hegel (London: Routledge, 2005), 184.
29 Quoted in Malabou, The Future of
Hegel, 185.

DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017 15

 extant, and her achievement was simply to reveal it. But this is a
fault of perspective that sees only the content of the scenario and
ignores its form. The designer’s labor consisted in taking this con-
tent in its speculative, contradictory form and reconfiguring it into
its ratiocinative form by constructing a means by which to under-
stand it: this is the cognitive work of design.
This allows us to propose a definition of the design problem
by reuniting its speculative form with particular content. Although
I began this article by refusing content a defining role in the deter-
mination of a design problem in preference to a particular logical
form; now that that form has been proposed, content can once
again be admitted. This content will not simply be the traditional
content of design (graphics, fashion, etc.) but that which marks the
difference between a problem for philosophy and a problem for
design. The content of the speculative judgment in philosophy is
the abstract and universal: questions of being, truth, freedom, and
so on—what Kant called “transcendental ideas.” By contrast, the
content of the speculative judgment in design concerns the con-
crete and particular: actual situations of contingent reality whose
speculative reformulation will only ever have a local effect. It can
be proposed therefore that a design problem (and thus a design
solution) is a scenario in which a designer brings a speculative
judgment to bear on the particular. However, this determination is
merely an abstraction. A great deal of “thinking through” will be
required if the speculative design problem is to become a more
concrete concept and the potential value of the consequent theoret-
ical reorientation is to be realized.

Conclusion
A dialectical reading of the design process does not contradict a
rhetorical, abductive, or paradoxical interpretation so much as it
brings to our attention something that was already present in all
of these approaches. The value of the dialectical approach lies in
helping us recognize the distinction between the form of the design
scenario and its content and the subjective nature of the designer’s
intervention therein. It offers us a means to further analyze (and
not simply describe) what we do when we design and define more
precisely what we mean when we talk about design thinking.

16 DesignIssues: Volume 33, Number 4 Autumn 2017

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