Developing digital design techniques: investigations on creative design computing

Developing digital design techniques: investigations on creative design computin

Redesigning Systems Thinking

The resent movement of Systemic Design seeks for new synergies between Design and Systems. While the usefulness of systems approaches in design has been fairly obvious, this paper argues that many core concepts in design are beneficial in systems thinking. This seems reasonable when it comes to the concept of Design Thinking. However, as this paper argues, the more practical core concepts of design are equally important. Designerly skills have been regarded as belonging mainly in the realm of traditional commercial design, whereas design thinking has been regarded as useful in strategic management settings. This paper argues against the idea of separating design thinking from design action. The skills and competences of design, such as the composition of the shape and form that are obvious in product design, are central to Systems Oriented Design (SOD). SOD is a version in the emerging pluralistic field of Systemic Design. The Systemic Design movement should recognise the core values of design and integrate them in systems thinking. This integration would contribute to innovation in both Systemic Design and systems thinking. Among the core competences of design discussed in the paper are composition, choreography, orchestration, the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk and open-ended multi-scalar design strategies that allow for both structural and organic development. The paper provides examples to support its proposal for the use of concrete aesthetic principles to guide Systemic Design processes. This paper expands the working paper entitled “Holistic and dynamic concepts in design: What design brings to systems thinking”, which was presented at the RSD3 symposium (2014)

Gigamaps: Their role as bridging artefacts and a new Sense Sharing Mode

The role of the Gigamap is constantly developing. This process has not been an intentional process but a process of discovery. By looking at some obvious roles of the Gigamap closer new concepts crystallize. This working paper reports on the rethinking of the Gigamap as a tool to design a shared picture of complex systems for systemic design intervention. The role of the Gigamap as bridging device to detect and cover destructive ruptures in the design process is investigated closer. Investigating the ruptures leads to understanding better the qualitative features the maps depict and how these features can be shared. This leads in the end to a proposal for a Sense Sharing Mode

Relating Systems Thinking and Design IV

The fourth special issue of FormAkademisk on the theme of Systemic Design features articles from RSD5 2016 held at OCADU, Toronto October 13 to 15. The themes of these five full papers are covering development of the design field at large, methodology development and practice of learning and education. The other main thread in this issue is sustainability, circular economy and urban co living strategies. The special issue follows after the publication of the RSD5 proceedings , containing videos, abstracts and working papers from the conference. In these full papers the themes form the presentations and working papers are developed further. The proceedings are found at: https://systemic-design.net/rsd-symposia/rsd5-2016/ Parallel to this special issue a Springer Book is published with Peter Jones as editor presenting an additional set of selected papers. Following the three former special issues it is fair to state that systemic design has developed beyond the initial point where it was still unclear what the notion of Systemic Design was covering and how it should be developed. The current issue demonstrates that systemic design has a wide reach and depth in its explorations. Cover image by Elisabeth Bjørndal Skjelten

The Roots of System-Oriented Design

Systems Oriented Design (SOD) draws on different sources. It is based on an experimental designerly practice for complexity that did not originally have strong ties to systems theories. The main component of this practice was the innovative use of visualization for dealing with complexity. Visualization is found in different variations in all design fields. To limit the discussion, however, we need to exclude many aspects of design visualization to get to the core of the issue: designing for complexity. The many different strategies for visualization in design are found in two groups that are less central to the discussion in this book: 1) visualisations of design visions and 2) solutions and information visualisation. Though both are important for communicating the results of a SOD process, we are more interested in looking at visualisations that are closely related to the generative learning and design process. This means visualisation as high-level processual tools, methods, and conceptual frameworks. Another framing of the subject is made by mainly excluding the figurative design sketches commonly found in any generative design process. This mode of generative sketching will only be discussed as secondary issues

Holistic and dynamic concepts in design

How may the inherent abilities of the designer contribute to the development of systemic design? This presentation will be a rhetoric monologue that will discuss some of the ideas and approaches known in design over a long period of time. It will discuss these in relation to the emerging concept of systemic design. Earlier attempts to integrate systems thinking in design have largely failed. Explanations for this failure have been arguments about systems approaches being alien to designerly ways, or the systems approaches have been too inflexible and dogmatic and the seamless integration into designing has failed. But there might be other additional reasons that so far have been largely overlooked. I will argue that design over time has developed a series of concepts in dealing with complex issues and to generate holistic resolutions. Some of these ideas and concepts are so basic and embedded in the designerly DNA that this might explain why they have not been looked at closer in this discussion. Systemic approaches have faced a resistance when entering the fields of design not only because they misfit but also because they had to compete with already embedded and integrated approaches and concepts. The radical potential of systemic design is that it might create new ways of relating design and systems thinking and hence also these inherent designerly concepts. Understanding the inherent ideas and concepts in regard to systemic design will shed more light on the problems systems thinking has faced regarding the design field. I propose that these designerly concepts to deal with complexity and create holistic solutions are the core of what design brings to systems thinking. One of the central features of the designer is the ability to create harmonic wholes. Confronted with many demands, briefs, complexities the designer aims at generating one holistic response that solves some or many of the contradictory inputs in the shape of a more or less esthetically beautiful and elegant form. In resent debates in design research this ability to design has been regarded as less important compared to the effort to move design closer to scientific research. If this shift comes at the cost of the mentioned central ability it will be catastrophic on several levels. First this designerly ability is truly the hallmark of design work and it is a genuinely specific activity that is particular to designers. We might find seemingly similar activities in other neighbouring fields like art and engineering, but none of them have the complete and versatile version as found in design. There is a danger that abandoning this root competence will destroy design. The core competence of composing holistic solutions will erode and we will see lesser solutions. Even as we speak discussing beauty, elegance and aesthetics in the context of systems thinking seems problematic

Beyond user centric design

This presentation will bring forward a criticism against the dominating attention to user centric design and discuss it from a perspective of systemic design. User centred design has gained an important position and attention in the design world and beyond. The spread of design thinking into management and engineering as well as the public sector has contributed to this. It has been useful and appropriate to bring these fields to a better understanding of user needs and their experiences. This development has largely been beneficial for the consumers, the users of systems and operators of machines. The development has been driven by its obvious congruent market orientation. Being user oriented is also good for sales. It can be coupled to branding and experience design easily. The current focus in service design on user experiences has driven this further. User oriented or user centric design has hence become a leading beacon for many. In design practice as well as in schools user orientation is, a priori, taken for ethical good. Also other professions like engineering and management have adopted user orientation within the concept of Design Thinking (Boland & Collopy, 2004) (Brown & Katz, 2009). The concept of user centric design has been discussed and questioned by Restrøm (Redström, 2008) clarifying the difficulties in the concept, proposing that the user is a fiction, designed during the design process. Baumer who points to the blurred division of users and non-users (Baumer, 2015) and Wagenknecht defines the role of the unwantedly affected non users, the affected bystanding that comes with marginalization and passivity (Wagenknecht, 2017). This paper intends not to add to this discussion and refinement of the understanding of user centric design. Rather I want to take a step back, to a birds eye view, and raise the criticality towards the design methodologies and theories that put the idea of the user at the centre on the costs of other concerns. The frame of the abstract does not allow to elaborate on the nuances of this critique. The intention is to develop and refine this in the next steps towards a full paper. The critique against a user centric design approach might contain several points addressed below. For each of them one could point to practice cases that would demonstrate e.g. sustainability etc. and more advanced approaches. However, the dominating user oriented approach in design is structurally not including these issues. It puts one aspect in the centre and this has unavoidably come at the expense of others. Antropocentric User centric perspective applied in design are by their nature anthropocentric. This means that it is centred on the needs, perspectives and approaches setting humans individually and humankind in the centre. In times when our planet is threatened by human activity, continuing to propagate a human centric worldview is no longer adequate. Not sustainable From the anthropocentric worldview unavoidably follows unsustainable development and a further build down of our fundament to sustain life on earth. Action for sustainability is not a naturally integrated result from the worldview but is an addition to the human centric worldview. Not agent based A human centric approach is weak when it comes to agency. The notion of agency in design is used with great confusion. I use the term exclusively for a person acting on behalf of another person, or other entities, non-humans and environments. Agency in design becomes ever more important, to include secondary users, affected bystanders or non-users, or non-human beings that are affected by the design intervention often in unintended ways. Does not care for the people in the production process Amongst the secondary users, most often forgotten, are the people involved in the production process. Seen from a systems perspective, the purpose of a company is manifold even if it is not expressed so. Creating jobs is an important aspect that also contributes to distribution of wealth. One could claim, depending on the analyses, that from a systemic perspective the root purpose of companies is to create jobs. Highly commercial A user / consumer centric approach tends to be highly commercial. It comes at the cost of other perspectives, e.g. community dominated perspectives or other societal perspectives. It does not cater for unintended consequences A user centric perspective is inherently un-systemic and thereby is not able to cater for the unintended effects of our interventions. Beyond user centric design The idea of user and use reduces the potential complex relationship between object and actor (Latour, 2005) to a question of the object serving the user. The roles seem to be fixed: The providers of objects (and services) to the ones that receive them (the users). The users role in such a scenario is relatively passive. Though this notion of division of roles is challenged by service design theory, where the user is allegedly co-designing the service in the moment of consumption, and the notion of participation and co-design inherent in user oriented design methodology, still the user is normally perceived as congruent with the consumer. Hence while inherently portrayed as an approach that reinforces a democratic design, by listening and involving the user it is not what it seems. User oriented or user centric design tends to reinforce the power divide in the liberalistic market economy and is politically not on the side of the disempowered but reinforces the means of the empowerment to increase their profit. Susan Gasson implies a critical approach to user centric design and suggests “human centered design” as a …. dialectic between organizational problem inquiry and the implementation of business process change and technical solutions. (Gasson, 2003) This indicates a design strategy that still keeps the human in the center but that has multiple perspectives. A multiple perspective approach in design is needed and needs to be developed further as a systemic design strategy. A fragmented and distributed approach, where, in the outset, everything is equal, is probably not the way to go. We need rather to have multiple centric design approaches where user centric design is one of several lenses. Others would be human centric and citizen centric design, design ethics, social systems, sustainability, technology politics and organizational design, economic issues and more. Most important we need to investigate possible side effects and unwanted outputs from the systems we design. In a multi-centric design approach, some issues need particular attention: 1) How the perspectives are related and how they might be strategized and orchestrated. For that we need a systemic design approach. We provide such a framework in SOD (Sevaldson, 2009, 2011) and tools to cope with it in e.g. gigamapping 2) The notion of agency comes in the forefront

A library of systemic relations

Birger Sevaldson www.systemsorienteddesign.net RSD5 Symposium Systemi