Design is a form of problem solving(1), but the types of problems we choose and how we choose to pursue them are also questions of design. In fact, these issues have the greatest impact on a designer’s ability to effect positive change. With an uncritical approach, you may spend too much time on useless thing and risk designing details that have systemic effects you don’t understand.

I’ll use some examples from pop culture to help frame where things can go wrong.

Jurassic Park Problems

In the film Jurassic Park, scientists resurrect several species of dinosaurs in a conflated ambition of scientific knowledge and theme park capitalism. While some safety precautions are taken, the danger of resurrecting dangerous species is fully realized upon the early-access attendees of the park.

In a prescient concern, Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum), questions the situational reality and its ramifications:

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

A colleague, Thomas Lennig, coined the concept of “Jurassic Park problems” as a way to apply Malcolm’s critical thinking to designing technology. I would define a Jurassic Park problem as:

a novel problem whose solution creates so much excitement that the true assumptions and motives are conflated and uncritically ignored.

The continuous threats from viscous T-Rex and killer Velociraptors occupy the heroes’ minds, but we the viewers should keep our eyes on the more important question: did this ever need to happen? The greatest lever in design is any choice about which problems to solve. To do so, as Designers we also frame problems to get at the real questions. This critical function of design practice often feels lost or forgotten.

The real danger is the unbridled urge to create when combined with significant leaps in technology. Humanity’s relationship with technology is often critiqued in popular stories: Icarus always flies too close to the sun. When not checked by wisdom, our curiosity can get us into trouble. I’ll go further to say that an I’ll-consider Jurassic Problem is actually a non-problem, one that camouflages its reason for existing. The allure is so great that we forget to even be critical of its existence.

In Jurassic Park, the latter portion of Malcolm’s speech is more direct:

Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun.

Reflecting on the film, we start to ask what did you expect to happen? The danger feels obvious in retrospect. The lack of caution feels obvious in retrospect. How can anyone creating something like this not care enough? To be fair, the park managers cared at least a little bit: they took a few common sense precautions. There are electric fences all over the island. There are safety locks on the doors. Still, it turns out they didn’t have a clue how strong, smart, and determined the dinosaurs would be.

Two fundamental flaws that result in a Jurassic Park Problem is:

Overconfidence…

in understanding of related issues, and your ability to cope with the resulting effects. After our heroes escape, the film ends and they return home safe. But the damage is done and the barrier is breached. A film franchise is born from this rampant technological pursuit and more dinosaurs are to be created. No one in the first film imagined what such a drastic leap in science would bring. They simply created a theme park and thought it was enough.

Failing to imagine…

the scope of your creation’s future context. When creating technology of significant impact, you’ll need wisdom to appreciate the effects of your actions and creativity to and envision its future.

Jurassic World Problems

In Jurassic World, the fourth and most recent addition to the franchise, instead of the question of whether dinosaurs should exist, the world has seemed to move on to some logical conclusion. A new eponymous theme park is in full swing and is well-attended by curious and bored alike. The core plot centers around the clever escape and rampage of the most destructive and terrifying dinosaur of the franchise to-date, the Indominus Rex.

Perhaps more terrifying than the Rex itself is that the attributes are acquired by design: through genetic engineering. In the first movie, Dr. Henry Wu explains the missing DNA of dinosaurs is filled in with simple genes from frogs to make the DNA complete. Dr. Wu returns to Jurassic World (with new park owner Masrani) to splice in other animals to design the ultimate characteristics of the Indominus Rex.

Engineering for enhanced strength, speed, and intelligence are highly questionable when considered under the precautionary principle. Even worse is pursuing genetic engineering without regard for consequences. Whether you splice genes or breed for desirable characteristics, characteristics of DNA are deeply entangled.

We learn that an accelerated growth rate in the dinosaur is achieved by using cuttlefish DNA, but it has a side effect of giving the dinosaur adaptive camouflage to blend into surroundings. We gives the Rex amphibian DNA for temperature regulation to make the tropical climate hospitable. Unfortunately this grants Rex the ability to avoid detection on infrared scanners which is a primary tool of park security.

As is true in designing for any complex system, there will ultimately be unintended consequences. By blindly isolating and manipulating elements, the law of averages suggests that some consequences will be destructive. The tragedy of Wu’s mistakes are following directives at face value and being blinded by his own ambition for succeeding. Of course, Misrani is at fault for enabling through pressure and bad management.(2)

The most dangerous aspect here is that the new superpowers the Rex gains are in part a surprise, forcing the team to learn a few harsh lessons in dealing with the monster early on. In the film, an early experience with dinosaur reveals a number of critical problems that feel obvious in retrospect, begging the question: was there was a way to have known these dangers and prevent them from happening?

Due to hubris and strict timelines, scientists didn’t bother to find out. What would you focus on if you could not determine all the possible outcomes?

In the technology industry, there is a popular policy of “move fast and break things” in an attempt to deliver change quickly to a world full of problems where we might be too cautious when worried about failure. But this has helped us overthrow the precautionary principle entirely. We ought to be worried about real damage that takes more effort to undo and consider “what will it take to close pandora’s box?”

Applying to a critical design process

Let’s tie these precautionary lessons from our friends at the Jurassic theme parks to see how we need to be critical in different areas of the design process.

Peter Drucker is famous for his differentiation of “doing the right thing” and “doing the thing right.” Bill Buxton has brought this thinking into the design process, illustrating the difference between getting the design right and getting the right design.(3)

In getting the right design, you want to make sure you are framing the problem correctly and the overall solution will be taken in the right direction. In getting the design right, you articulate details informed by the strategy that will bring about the desired outcome.

So in taking lessons from our friends in the dinosaur parks, we can map out how to avoid these prehistoric pitfalls.

Getting the Right Design

avoiding Jurassic Park problems

• Are we addressing the right issue?
• Is our framing effective?
• What are related concerns?
• Should this future happen?

Getting the Design Right

avoiding Jurassic World problems

• Are we creating the right value?
• Is our understanding of the context complete?
• What are related effects?
• At what cost shall we bring this to life as envisioned?

Increasingly we find acts of design are ethically and politically entangled because the result reflects the beliefs (and biases) of the people and processes involved in making them. While often entertaining, stories often serve as a prototype to help us process what possible futures may look like. While somewhat campy as thinking tools, these stories illustrate extreme ecological and ethical implications of design decisions.

A final remark from Ian Malcom:

I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here, it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox.

1. an oversimplification, but a useful one.
2. It is worth noting that Wu remains proud of his creation and achieving what he has done; he openly blames Masrani in a “be careful what you wish for” retort.
3. Peter Merholz and Kristen Skinner have mapped these two areas to the two main divisions of the Double Diamond design process model: a concise description of a sequential design process that visually illustrates patterns of divergence (widening ideation) and convergence (narrowing of focus). There are important criticisms of this model, but it is still a useful simplification in some contexts and is commonplace in the language of designers. The irony that the double diamond model is itself an outdated dinosaur does not escape me.

Post also published on Medium.