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From the Classroom to the Real World
Get PDFOur experience of introducing gigamapping in a public sector digitalisation agency.
This action research builds on the interest of the authors to test knowledge acquired through the Executive Master of Systems Oriented Design in their own design practice at Oslo Origo, a public sector digitalisation agency. Here, the authors are employed as in-house service designers. The short paper builds on their hands-on experiences of trying out gigamapping as a technique of systems oriented design.
Through four case studies, the authors describe how they have introduced gigamapping in their workplace. Their learning path of putting the theory into practice made the authors reflect on the context in which a gigamapping session is embedded and how this context influences the mapping process itself, as well as the usefulness of the outcome. The analysis resulted in three boundaries to consider when moving from the classroom theory to practising gigamapping in “the real world”: 1. the inner boundary of the systems oriented designer (as confidence, trust) 2. The immediate boundaries of the workplace (as hierarchy, relations and culture) and 3. The wider boundaries of the organisation (as power dynamics, flows of money, paradigm). The suggested boundaries and the questions that come with them might be useful for other designers who want to start experimenting with systems oriented design at their workplace
Residue to Resource
Get PDFEfforts to remanufacture and reuse can drive the much-needed change in industrial production practices to reduce the dependency on virgin wood as a raw material and aid natural resource regeneration. Remanufacture and reuse are required to foster a well-functioning ecosystem and to push back the adverse effects of climate change for a hopeful future.
Through systemic design mapping, it was observed that utilising residue from one industry as a raw material for new processes can provide an integrated solution to multiple issues at the source (Figure 1). It can reduce waste generation, create value for residual material to improve its recovery, reduce marginal cost and improve production efficiency. The proposed interventions align with the UN SDGs 8 and 12. As recommended by SDG 8 (Goal 8 |Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d.-b), it impacts economic productivity by contributing to diversification and innovation. The systemic approach aligns with SDG 12 (Goal 12 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d.) as it attempts to reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction and reuse to move towards sustainable production methods. The solution also focuses on improving our reliance on natural resources, contributing positively to SDG 12
Jumping Conversations
Get PDFJumping conversations are essential when working with complexity. We have been looking at how a gigamap works as a mediation tool. When working with transdisciplinary groups to utilize the different perspectives and competencies that such groups possess, we need to zoom in and out and move between different perspectives in a constant flow. This often leads to people talking past each other, and people start self-silencing to reduce frustration. However, this also causes the group to miss important information and perspectives. The traditional way of working around this is to look at one part at a time using PowerPoint presentations.
Unfortunately, this can prevent participants from seeing connections and how some elements might influence others. We have used our experience to describe how gigamaps and other visual tools help in conducting jumping conversations and using these in ways that are significant and desirable. In this way, we look at gigamapping from a meta-perspective and study how gigamapping affects a transdisciplinary group and will help overcome some of the challenges that occur with such groups when working with complexity
Leverage Is Fractal, Relative… And What Else? We need a theory of leverage in systemic design
Get PDFDonella Meadows’s 1997 “Places to Intervene in a System” is the cardinal resource on leverage points: places in a system where the littlest effort yields the greatest reward. As was her hallmark, Meadows’s treatment of leverage points was clear, concise, catchy, and constructive. Through storytelling and simple tables, she provided a compelling framework, ranking twelve types of leverage points in order of effectiveness. However, Meadows did not qualify her taxonomy of leverage points with much more than eloquent argument, feedback from colleagues, and her own experience. So, while the legacy of leverage points is certainly evidence that Meadows was on to something (published in Whole Earth Review, “Places to Intervene in a System” has been cited thousands of times), it is surprising that Meadows’s work has not been formally critiqued, validated, or advanced more since it was first published. Yet, as a result, the logics of leverage woefully lacks nuance. In her attempt to dispel the myths of leverage points, Meadows may have perpetuated their status even further, leaving a theory of leverage untouched for decades.
I call for novel, critical perspectives on leverage in systemic design. A deeper understanding of leverage and other features of systems will help systemic designers better understand the nature of systems and design better strategies for accelerating systems change. For example, in this presentation, I argue that Meadows’s “Places to Intervene in a System” fails to appreciate the fractal and relativistic nature of leverage. Leverage is fractal because we can find leverage points for leverage points. For instance, we can decompose systems phenomena into subsystems and search for leverage in these subsystems. Leverage is relative because someone’s power over a system depends on what they have the ability to influence directly. Thus, identifying a “local” leverage point may be more important than identifying the system’s “global” leverage points. I show how systemic designers can account for these factors in leverage analysis. What else can we learn about leverage? Was Meadows’s original typology exhaustive? Are they truly ranked in the correct order? What other features of systems can we identify and use? By asking these questions and beyond, we challenge our assumptions about a hallowed concept in systems change, unlocking the possibility of advancing our theories of leverage for the first time in decades
Quilting Care Patterns: Remaking our social fabric
Get PDFThis exploratory project uses quilting as a metaphor and a means of reflecting on and reimagining the social fabric of care in society. Through a process of critical making, an interactive exhibition, and quilting workshops, an inquiry is undertaken into the social structures guiding our care systems. This project builds a “care pattern library” that materializes social structures into quilted patterns to cultivate collective consciousness regarding our evolving social fabric. It makes visible unjust patterns of domination that “sneak in through the backdoor”, reproducing oppression in mundane, everyday caring relations. Furthermore, this project encourages an intentional enactment of social structures that work toward liberatory aims by bringing forth a broad spectrum of patterns from communities that are resisting domination in their care configurations. Through a collective quilting process, a dialogue emerges about how a multiplicity of liberatory care patterns can respectfully co-exist within a dynamic social fabric
Research by Infrastructural Design: Systems thinking from the perspective of thermodynamics
Get PDFSmog has contributed largely to the environmental problems of many cities in China. On the other hand, China has gone through a period of rapid infrastructure growth in the urbanisation process. People have noticed the potential of infrastructure in mega-cities as part of the built environment, and the paper presents three infrastructure-oriented proposals from a summer school project named “Design against Smog: Air through the Lens of Thermodynamic Architecture” which aims to deal with the problems in Lujiazui area of Shanghai. The proposals show their systems thinking on urban functions, use different types of infrastructure as bridges to connect the air to urban activities and give their possible strategies for purifying smog
Social Network Analysis for Cybernetic Interaction Design in Technology-Supported College Curricula -17
Get PDFIn the Information Age, social media tools produce cybernetic feedback loops that respond to the human agency on the fly, making it important to equip individuals with skills to navigate these feedback loops and traverse through a society where polarised online debates about controversial issues like climate change and vaccines are common. Educational environments become safe, norm-driven environments to equip individuals with these digital skills. In this mixed methods study, we suggest using a cybernetic interaction design approach to mimic the ongoing effects of the cybernetic feedback loops of social media and equip students with the agency to use such tools to create cohesive learning communities. A participant observer rewired in-class live chats on the Reddit social media platform in a graduate psychology class of 17 students on the fly based on weekly social network analysis of live chats and qualitative field notes taken to construct a brief ethnography of lectures that followed live chats. Discussions about collected data led to restructuring the format of the live chat with regard to the involvement of the instructor, the number of concurrent groups, and group selection processes. Results from our weekly mixed methods analyses suggest that rewiring the live discussions solidified the likelihood for closed ties between n>2 agents to emerge and for each agent to be connected with other users who were popular in the network. Our inquiry suggests that cybernetic interaction design may be used to create a cohesive learning community that could co-construct ideas in technology-assisted college classrooms through critical discourse, an important skill required to navigate an information-saturated society
Verksted—A Networked Space for Collaborative Sense-Making
Get PDFThe megatrends of globalisation, digitalisation, and climate change call policymakers to design interventions that can address the systemic challenges facing society. Even as initiatives like the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals and EU Missions frame the challenges and provide direction, the journey towards implementation is long and arduous. Digital technologies and digital twins are proliferating at a pace that is causing a data and knowledge explosion while presenting solutions and challenges.
This paper speculates how societies might interpret recommendations from public studies and harness technology to engage multiple stakeholders in the design of products (goods and services) that are customised for local socio-ecological contexts. Towards this speculation, this paper explores and conceptualises “verksted” as an action-orientated place-based facility for multi-stakeholder collaboration, e.g., between developers, operators, policymakers, researchers, investors, educators, and concerned citizens (verksted is Norwegian for workshop). The paper makes two contributions towards framing actionable policy: (a) the knowledge loop as a conceptual and methodological construct of the verksted and (b) a capability map to guide the operationalisation of the verksted as a node in a network for continuous co-design, education, and experimentation.
The paper builds on literature in systems thinking, knowledge management, and enterprise architecture. The paper uses the author’s observations and interviews from three main sources: (i) Norwegian authorities’ policies for research-based innovation, cluster-based entrepreneurship, and digitalisation, (ii) activities at HelseInn towards establishing a design-driven network in the Innlandet county of Norway and (iii) research projects at the Centre for Connected Care – a research-driven innovation centre comprising 17 organisations researching the design, procurement, and scaling of innovation in the health sector
In the Name of Justice: Affective Polarization and the Futures of Societal Coordination
Get PDFAffective polarization is a societal condition that, if left unregulated, can have detrimental effects on our ability to coordinate and make informed decisions, particularly in the face of challenging circumstances. The purpose of this inquiry is to uncover the driving forces behind the emergence and escalation of affective polarization. Using the principles and tools of design thinking, systems thinking, and futures thinking, the current state of the system is investigated in the context of three dimensions: our individual experience (identity), our relational interactions (coordination), and our material observation (knowledge), all of which interact to form an emergent property—decision-making.
This research reveals that our beliefs are fused to our sense of virtue, which provides a rationale for the hostility that arises when those beliefs are questioned by conflicting perspectives. It also presents evaluation criteria for assessing coordinative capacity, which is used to evaluate the state of the current system. A set of four alternative futures states are then envisioned to consider potential outcomes based on how Canadian society elects to deal with the problem we are currently facing. The four outcomes are based on a multilateral decision to exit the situation, a unilateral decision to adapt to the situation, a unilateral decision to force a situation, or a multilateral decision to collaborate. These scenarios are assessed with the same coordinative capacity evaluation criteria, where all five states (current and futures) are compared.
The assessment results produce a theoretical framework defined as the Four C’s for Enabling Coordinative Capacity (curiosity, connection, courage, and collaboration), which are a set of proposed core values and corresponding guiding principles intended to underpin any strategic anti-polarization or depolarization initiatives for increasing social coordination and informed decision-making
The case for describing race in alternative text attributes
Get PDFDesigners and developers have huge power in shaping societal norms. We also have a huge impact in creating a story and crafting a sort of reality for people that consume the content we put out into the world. Alt text forms part of that storytelling of a designed reality