“Wicked problems are a class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.”

Sound familiar? Many intranet design problems share these attributes. Wicked problems require different thinking and design skills to solve than typical problems encountered in the design of symbolic communications, material objects, or even organized services. The intranet, conceptualized as a wicked problem, also needs different approaches.

A *very* well articulated post by ThoughtFarmer's Gordon Ross on why intranets are so simply, yet so challenging. Many people still treat intranets like brochure design projects, but as Gordon explains, intranets really represent a different kind of design problem.

We also hinted at this approach to creating effective intranets in our webinar for Atlassian, on Designing for Adoption yesterday.