- I've been a designer for over 30 years
and some of my best friends are designers.
So don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way.
We may think systemically,
but that doesn't make us systems thinkers.
Yes, we understand how to map touchpoints
in a user's experience.
And we apply ethnographic practices that generate empathy.
And we often focus on solutions
instead of the initial conditions
that created the problem to begin with.
We can get so focused on innovating ways to mop up a floor
that we lose sight of where the water is coming from.
Systems thinkers meanwhile understand it's better
to find the tap and turn it off
before doing anything else.
Designers can also be so focused on details
that we lose sight of larger forces at play.
It's like removing the liver from the human body
to study its complexity
but forgetting that is connected to a body.
System thinking looks not just at the micro
but the meso and the macro
and the interconnections between them all.
And it explores the consequences of our own actions,
not only in the moment but over time.
So let's take a look
at a few important systems thinking concepts.
Understanding interconnectedness is central
to systems thinking.
We can't target at one thing without influencing another.
Because of this, our focus in design
for social innovation should expand
beyond the limited constraints we're used to working within.
That doesn't mean we don't bring
human-centered design practices to the situation.
It means we have to apply additional tools
to address the conditions that created
the recurring patterns of behavior we're trying to address.
This inner connectedness is not static but dynamic
and responsive, their actions and their reactions.
Our liver for example has a capacity
to deal with a lot of toxins.
But if a habit of eating too much sugar persists over time
the liver alters its behavior
and this then forces us
to alter our personal behaviors forever
whether we want to or not.
Nothing concrete has changed our bodies still our body,
our liver is still our liver
but the way they interact with each other has been changed.
And that changes everything.
Due to time delays,
another systems thinking concept addressing issues
by the time damage becomes evident is much harder
than we might think.
Once a smaller system like the liver
is compromised due to external factors,
it's not as easy as remedying the last action that pushed it
over the threshold to make things normal again.
The resilience we expected or hoped for
is already exhausted.
The metabolic changes that lead
to diabetes occur imperceptibly at first
but pick up speed exponentially over time.
This non-linearity
is another important systems thinking concept.
The dynamic interconnectedness and time delays mentioned
above amplify patterns of growth in surprising ways.
We're often caught off guard
by how quickly things take a turn for the worst
because we rarely take into account,
these exponential changes.
Another systems thinking concept is emergence
or the occurrence of new behaviors
that could never have been predicted
by watching the behavior of the system beforehand.
The physical dysfunctions of diabetes
could be considered emergent behavior
because there represent an entirely new and systemic form
of behavior in the normal physiological functions
of the human body.
Nothing in the day-to-day behavior
before the onset of diabetes could have predicted them.
Yet there they are and the old assumptions options
and habits of yesterday are thrown out the window.
So now we've gotten a little peak at social innovation
and a little peak at systems thinking.
Throughout the rest of the course,
we'll dig into them further
with an eye towards synthesizing them
with our existing design abilities.