Real-world problems are often ill-structured[1], which means they display the following characteristics:
- They lack a clear scope.
- They lack clear criteria for what is a useful solution or desired endpoint; there’s no single “correct” answer.
- There’s no obvious best approach for coming up with a solution.
While there are problems individuals can start developing solutions for immediately, ill-structured problems require examining the context and causes of the problem to properly define and understand the problem itself. Nearly all professionals work on these problems, including developers, managers, educators, and others.
D.I.S., which stands for “Describe, Inquire, State," is a domain-agnostic method for structuring (or defining) ill-structured problems. Its initial input is a short, undefined description of a problem, while its final output is a brief, well-structured problem statement.
To make D.I.S. most effective, it’s best if the problem is one you consider truly important to you and you’ve tried to solve it but haven’t found a satisfactory solution for it. Ideally, one to three people who are familiar with the problem and whose perspectives on the problem are different from yours could join you in applying this method.
Using this guide, you will learn how to work through the following steps:
- Create an initial description of your chosen problem—any real-world problem.
- Inquire into the details of the problem to write a problem case, conduct research and revisit your understanding of the problem along the way, and assess the quality of your problem case with or without using a generative text tool, based on a detailed assessment rubric.
- Summarize the different parts of the problem case into a problem statement:
- Create your problem statement.
- Create a problem statement using a generative text tool.
- Assess the quality of your problem statement with or without using a generative text tool, based on a detailed assessment rubric.
If you would like to share your experience of the D.I.S. method with us, please fill out this short survey. Your feedback is important to us so we can continually improve.
[1] David H. Jonassen, “Toward a Design Theory of Problem Solving,” Educational Technology Research and Development 48, no. 4 (December 1, 2000): 63–85, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02300500.
