This past year we became acutely aware of how interconnected we all are. The toilet paper shortage gave the world a glimpse at supply chains, and the pandemic as a whole was a crash course in how our healthcare system can handle crises. It can be difficult to envision how we can make a difference even if we know the systems we live in don’t function well for everyone.
But what does this have to do with design?
Designers make choices that other people have to live with. It’s up to us, as designers, to make those choices count. Even though it may not feel like we have the agency to make these decisions in a way that benefits all, we do have the ability to think critically about the impact of the products and services we design for society. We won’t always have all the answers or always get it right. For systems thinking in design to work, there have to be strong partnerships to overcome complexity and make a difference.
Systems thinking is one way to think about how we can make more ethical and holistic choices as designers. It helps us “push beyond the immediate problems to see the underlying patterns, the ways we may leverage the system, and how we can learn and adapt as the system continues to change. It doesn’t make these challenges any less complex, but it gives us a way to embrace that complexity and work toward a healthier system” (Omidyar Group). Before we get into some practical ways to apply systems thinking to your practice, let’s define what systems thinking is.
To understand systems thinking, we must first understand what a system is. A system is the interaction or relationship of essential parts that are organized in a way that achieves something. A system must have parts that are somehow related to each other and there must be a purpose or function. The relationship of elements is integral to a system. And the outcome of all the interconnected parts is the function or purpose of the system. Furthermore, systems exist within systems. Where most of us rely on clocks throughout the day to wake up or get to a Zoom meeting on time, accurate time is essential for the internet or GPS to work.
Let’s take for example, an old-school wrist watch — the kind with an hour and minute hand. A wrist watch is typically made up of many small parts that work together to keep and display time anywhere you go. If we were to take a watch apart and lay the pieces all out on a table, we’d find springs, wheels, gears, gaskets, seals, rotors, etc. Once taken apart, the watch pieces are no longer a system because they are not working together for the purpose of telling time. Without the relationships, it is merely a collection of parts.
Replacing parts within a broken watch may not be as simple as it sounds. If the battery was dead, you wouldn’t grab a triple A. Even if you were able to connect the watch to a larger battery, it wouldn’t be as portable as it was before and now we’d be dealing with a slightly different system.
“Very often, this is the way we humans try to solve problems — by fixing the parts without accounting for how they work together and hoping that it improves the whole.”
This is where systems thinking comes in.
Systems thinking is an approach which includes mindsets, processes, and tools that allow us to design more holistically.
Have you found that you learn best by taking things apart or do you learn by building? For many centuries, scientists learned by taking things apart. In fact, this reductionist way of thinking is what led to the different specialties of science. It wasn’t until modern times that researchers began to pay more attention to patterns themselves and sometime around the 1920s, general systems theory was born (Kaufman).
Inspired by Leyla Acaroglu’s Disruptive Design program
Someone who engages in a systems thinking approach: