With the fast advance on technology and how complex the technological systems are becoming, a group of designers from several nationalities decided that it's time to create a new approach to solve these complex problems. The classical design methodologies are no longer sufficient to solve a lot of the current problems and the ones that are coming.
This new field is called Design X.

“Complex social technical problems are composed by legal difficulties, political difficulties, economic difficulties, social difficulties and behavior problems. That’s Design X.”
Don Norman

Design X is a new evidence-based approach that tackles the many types of serious and complex problems that currently exist.

The current social-technological problems involve several different elements, from:
- a crowd of people
- institutions
- technologies related to communication, computation and transport
- health
- education
- urbanization
- environmental problems
These problems contribute to the management of resources, from energetically to economical and pollitical ones, that tend to provoke sustainable problems that mainly affect the well-being of the people.

New design methodologies have to incorporate findings from at least two areas that have studied the complexity of relationships in diverse systems. The science of systems and of services. The knowledge acquired by them has great value for the solutions of today's complex problems.

The designer's role will be to develop solutions to complex problems with knowledge acquired from different areas, but based on people. New test methods will have to be developed that allow for more explicit results.

Although the various branches of design remain active and need to exist, their knowledge is not enough to solve complex socio-technological problems, which is where Design X focuses.

DesignX needs new techniques and knowledge, as well as a large and diverse multidisciplinary that involves different teams with different knowledge, interests and values.

“Above all, there is that word "systems." Designers are usually trained to produce relatively simple products and services. DesignX ups the magnitude of the issues being faced to those that might involve entire communities with hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, with individuals, groups, organizations and technology both simple and complex, sometimes autonomous, working according to their own rules and programming. For these problems, we need new training, new skills and new methods.”
Don Norman

What's the approach to solve a problem?

Initially we have to understand what might be the root causes of the problem. After analyzing it and have a clear defined problem, we think of several different solutions that might solve it in a reasonable, practical, safe, sensible and accessbile way.

After reaching a conclusion at the level of solutions, none of them is definitive.

To guarantee the quality of the solution it is necessary to test with people first.

In reality, the entire process is done with people in mind, but it is very complicated to know how they will act, which is why it is always necessary to test the solution, correct the flaws and incorporate suggestions, so a new solution can be created.
After that we should test it again, and so on, cyclically until the best solution is found, depending on the limiting parameters (usually financial and temporal – budget and deadline).

Prototypes

This type of methodology requires prototypes and values ​​them immensely, so they can be tested with people during the product development phase and not after product development.

Theoretically, they should be tested before the product even exists (when only the concept exists), during development and at the end.

If they're tested on the concept phase, you can collect very important data that will help to ensure a better development. You don't wanna try to solve something that's not a problem in the first place.

What differentiate Design?

It is in this whole process that the role of design is particularly important and different from other scientific areas. Usually those who develop many of the products are engineers, the problem is that they don't have the same broad notions that a general designer has.
In most cases engineers are experts in something concrete, but have difficulty leading with the problem in general, or even correctly perceiving the initial problem.

What, in the eyes of an engineer, may seem like a simple interaction, in reality it can affect different behaviors of systems that involve individuals that end up affecting society and, in the long run, can even affect the human evolution.

That's why it's important to make sure that the solutions are the most appropriate for people and this is achieved by testing.

The results are still difficult to obtain or even temporary in their certainty.
Society is a very complex system that involves too many variables and aspects that are in constant evolution.

“I try to remind engineers why do engineers design, build, create things. Well it’s for the benefit of people in society isn’t it? So shouldn’t we know more about people in society?
We have to understand the social sciences, the engineering sciences, we have to understand materials and technologies, we have to understand business and it’s really interesting because we have to take all this into account doing the design. But design is, whether engineering or not, is for people. So the first thing is that, the second is you have to go watch people."
Don Norman