This article seeks to contribute to a discussion which could propitiate, in my opinion, the emergence of interesting connections between the Systemic Design field, German media theory, and the work of Bruno Latour on Science and Technology Studies (STS). Based on the invitation of this symposium to discuss at the frontiers of Systemic Design, I will outline this argument in the following four parts: profession versus discipline; things and obstacles; ANT and confrontational agencies; and (un)designing technological apparatuses for confrontation

Darzentas, Jenny

Darzentas, John

OCAD University Open Research Repository

OCAD University Open Research Repository
Faculty  of  Design
2015  
Systems  thinking  for  design  
thinking.
Darzenta s ,  John  and  Darzen ta s ,  Jenny  
Sug g e s t e d  citat io n:  
Darzen ta s ,  John  and  Darzent a s ,  Jenny  (2015)  Systems  thinking  for  design  
thinking.  In:  Relating  Systems  Thinking  and  Design  (RSD4)  2015  Symposium,  
1-3  Sep  2015,  Banff,  Canada .  Available  at  
http://open re s e a r c h .oc ad u .c a/id/ep rin t /2027/
Open  Research  is  a publicly  accessible,  curated  repository  for  the  preservation  and  
disse mination  of  scholarly  and  creative  output  of  the  OCAD  Universi ty  com mu ni t y .  
Material  in  Open  Research  is  open  access  and  made  available  via  the  consen t  of  the  
author  and/or  rights  holder  on  a non- exclusive  basis.  
Systems Thinking for Design Thinking: Towards Proposing 
a Generic Approach to Design
John Darzentas, Jenny Darzentas
Dept. of Product and Systems Design Engineering
University of the Aegean 
Syros, Greece
The story of Penelope…
• Excellent student, very good communication skills, passionate about design
• Began work on her final year project with great enthusiasm
• Undertook nearly two years of intensive research… in a variety of countries, and 
under several supervisors.
• Gathered masses of material using very many types of participative design 
methods and techniques (cultural probes, diaries, focus groups, etc.) as well as 
ethnographic approaches 
• She learnt many things…
• ….but in the end was unable to organise the material to help her to create the 
design intervention.
• Result: Large disconnect between her final concept and her research  
What was the design space?
Helping the population to take more exercise
• Studied populations of various ages and backgrounds, in more that one country and 
culture.
• Some findings: 
• people are not motivated enough to exercise regularly
• fear is not a good motivator
• difficulties to fit exercise into existing way of life
• expense in money (equipment, gym fees) and time (lost from work or personal relaxation time, 
time with family, etc.)
• ‘pain for no visible gain’
• …
• Design intervention: 
• mobile phone application for a balancing exercise to perform while standing and travelling on 
trams, underground trains and buses
Current practices for approaching the design 
problem space
• Research shows that many designers have evolved their own methods for 
tackling problems using a combination of:
• insight,
• market research, 
• brainstorming and collaborative methods
• Design students are taught a variety of different methods and processes
• ‘selection of tools’ by both professionals and students to analyse  the design 
space depends upon what seems the most tractable in the given circumstances.
• Often such spaces are framed against background of experiential knowledge (of 
those stakeholders, including the designer) 
• They engage with the problem
• within a dominant narrative (e.g. cost benefit, usability, sustainability, etc.)
• according to a ‘brief’ (healthier population, equality of resources) etc. 
The design space in a systemic perspective
• Changing these dominant narratives is the first challenge for 
designers and design educators.
• Using the systemic perspective to frame the design space presents 
challenges:
• Change people’s way of thinking (mechanistic to interconnected)
• so ingrained is the rationalistic mechanistic approach that we are ‘programmed’ to look 
for cause and effect and inner workings of the machine
• However, understanding that tweaking on part of the system produces effects elsewhere 
is helpful example and one close to real life
• Learn new terminology and its meanings
• … 
Systems Thinking for Design Thinking
• Despite the challenges, in Design we see a renewed and increasing involvement of 
Systems Thinking
• But apart from the holistic view of design problems and the realization that as much as 
possible of the whole of the design space should be considered from the initial stages
• there should be: 
• Systemic proposals as far as Design praxis is concerned in terms of methods and methodologies
• Acknowledgement  in Design Thinking of the use of Systems tenets and potential principles in general
• Also grounding and justifying  with the aid of Systems Thinking the adoption of the various methods 
and methodologies used in Design
• But most of all generic Systems Thinking Design approaches should be formed and used
Systems Thinking for Design Thinking
These proposals offer a main platform/framework to design students 
and practitioners for reference and grounding.
We posit Systems Thinking as contributing  towards both
• a theoretical framework for Design Culture 
• a methodology  for Design Practice
Systems Thinking for Design Thinking
• This paper attempts to present a general proposal for the Systemic tackling of design 
problems.
• The principal assumption is that the forming of the design Space should be a main 
Design concern.
• The ‘how’ this Space is formed is a major issue here. 
• The ‘why’ all this effort to adopt Systemic Thinking should be applied must also be 
justified.
• The utilisation of Systems tenets which can be treated as basic Design Principles, 
should be attempted and treated as a main structuring and processing tools
Why Systems in Design?
• Trying to explain the ‘why systems in Design’  we can start via a trajectory through 
experience to summarise it as follows:
• Happy with disciplinary thinking and praxis tools, solving complicated problems 
assumed definable but requiring a number of assumptions to be satisfied. Main 
tendency being the simplification.
• Moving into more specific domain which even at its beginning could be called 
multi/interdisciplinary, but still treating its problems as complicated and simplifiable
mainly by adopting reductionism.
• Then the world of heavily multi/interdisciplinary problems comes with the main 
characteristic being the move from complication to complexity. The problems are 
now really complex, basically because they are human centric and not the neater 
complicated engineering ones.
Need to retain complexity
• A lot of effort is still required from all those involved with complex human 
centric problems to admit that complexity with its creative richness, is a very 
useful thing and must be welcomed and not be ‘bulldozed’ out of the problem 
space. 
• Design, as a representative domain of the complex world of problem tackling, is 
evolving in exciting ways, but it is always challenged by reasons to apply 
reductionism.
• Systems Thinking, on the other hand works with the ‘holon’ which cannot be 
defined nor easily co-exist with reductionism.
• new challenges: “Service Design” genuinely human centric and complex.
Towards a Systems Thinking Approach
• For a Systems Thinking approach to tackling design problems the 
primary step is to justify the claimed importance of ‘how’ its design 
problem space is discovered, understood and ‘formed’. 
• In other words ‘how’ to acquire a Systemic representation of that 
space, i.e. ‘The System’ with which we Design.
Towards a Systems Thinking Approach
• The understanding and discovery of a representative System of the design 
problem space can be guided by:
• tenets and potential principles of Systems Thinking such as emerging properties, 
requisite variety, self reference, organisation, self organisation, distinction, closed 
(as far their organisation), open (as far as energy and matter), etc.
• The forming of the System of the problem space, mainly in terms of its 
dynamic characteristics and processes can be supported by:
• notions such as structure, states, control, attractors, code, etc.
• The aim being to acquire as representative a System as possible, with its 
parts and their relations and its ‘life’. 
Example of utilising the notions of complexity 
and variety
Complexity:
• The more complex a system appears to be, the ‘healthier’ it is, because if understood, it offers 
more opportunities for design interventions than a less complex one. 
Variety can be seen in a similar way:
• in cybernetics it has been introduced to measure the potential of a system to defend itself 
against external threats or interference in the sense that only variety controls or defeats 
variety. 
• e.g. Systems Thinking designers will possess the knowledge to add in to their methods the determining of the 
variety of demands, i.e. the number of different demands on their design intervention. 
• Cybernetics also provides the notion of requisite variety (i.e. the minimum number of choices 
needed to resolve uncertainty)
Towards Proposing a Generic Approach to 
Design
• The proposed generic approach to design is an attempt to bring 
together Systems Thinking with current co-design participatory 
methodologies
• The proposal is concentrating on the representing and structuring of 
the System to be designed and it is our position that this is the front 
line to successful design interventions.
• A range of systems methodologies such as those coming from the 
management domain can complement and aid the Design praxis. 
Summarising the generic approach
• Structure/form the problem space (i.e. the system)   for Learning and 
understanding  
• using a various tools : 
• rich pictures
• ethnographic approaches 
• Participative design activities (ANT, Action research, co-design …)
• ….
Summarising the generic approach
• Use tenets, concepts, ‘evolved principles’ to guide: 
• the structuring of the ‘system’ (design space) 
• the learning about, and understanding of, that system
• Use systems methodologies  (SSM, SDD, “giga-mapping”, etc.)  and 
other methodologies to move towards design thinking and praxis by 
returning continuously to the system, and utilising tenets etc. 
To conclude:
• Converging to a design brief could be achieved via a ‘discourse’ based 
upon,  for instance, ‘relevant subsystems’ (to use the Soft Systems 
Methodology term) 
• Penelope, we believe, could have benefitted from this approach.
What could Penelope have done differently?
Had she ‘anchored’ her problem space in a systems  perspective (i.e. faced the design space as a 
system) 
• She would then have been able to make use of principles and tenets from the systemic 
perspective to help her to :
• make (better) sense of her data collections e.g. she would have discovered interconnections (emerging 
properties, new components…)
• organise the data gathered  via various methods and techniques e.g. by distinguishing the ‘relevant sub 
systems’
• This would then have offered her support to:
• be guided to think about ways to deal the problem space and where the design intervention(s) could have 
impact
• ….thereby avoiding the disconnect between elicited material and her design outcome and potentially 
retaining opportunities for creativity and innovation 
