A Future for Design Science？

In a world seemingly committed to more complex systems, design science should be embracing the ‘sciences of complexity’. Otherwise, its usefulness will be limited to those ‘tame’ problems amenable to its current methods, unable to address the ‘wicked’ problems which increasingly populate our world. There is already a large body of practical experience with complexity theory on which design scientists can draw. Placing complexity theory in an evolutionary context, based on General Evolution Theory(GET), could be the next frontier for design science. GET enriches time perspectives and ‘patterns’ in complexity theory, both elements useful to design practice. A particular benefit of Complexity and General Evolution Theories is that they span all dynamic systems, and thereby diminish the disciplinary barriers between the physical, biological and social sciences which have for so long bedevilled practice. The methodological issues in broadening design science to incorporate reductivist, systemic, and evolutionary perspectives are considered, and a meta-methodology based on Participatory Action Research is proposed as a way to integrate these very different epistemologies.