Day 2-Navigating the Pitfalls of System Thinking in Service Design

— Dive into struggles and pitfalls of system thinking drawing on my own practice and collaborators in space, and a way forward with struggles

— Aware of hype with systems thinking and apply to design, and UK design council and lots of tool with systems thinking and academic articles to contribute to

— But we need a nuanced approach for integrating system thinking

• Do it in way that’s too rushed, and potential to erode nature of service design practice and risk of reinforcing sense of hopeless
• I’ll share six common pitfalls and hope for way forward

— First pitfall is the trap of a flat map

— There are maps in service design work that capture hyper-complexity and put all things in system on map and allow us to wrap our arms around them

• Acknowledge we can’t capture everything, but once we made big mega-map we have captured system in entirety

— Contributes to view from above and nowhere, and no one can see all of this and amalgamating into god-like view and reinforcing power of people who made it and difficult to understand

— These systems maps contribute to cognitive overload when thinking about systems and actually erase our ability to act through hyper-complexity by erasing existing assets we have as humans operating in world to do systems change

— As counter to this, work in ways with embodiment and emotion are systemic capacity and understand nature of emotions and bodily reactions to understand what’s acceptance and what’s not

— Children’s convention

• Take map of child welfare in Norway and two hour theater production with theater students in Oslo, and complex human emotions
  • Biological rights of parent and child and how things play out

— Contradictions moving through and many people in child-welfare themselves and kind of reflection around own reactions in system and own entanglement in system

• As we prepped for larger performance worked with people experiencing system and play out scenarios and they would direct
  • By keeping embodiment of system alive, we capture more of its variety, while keeping agency in people’s bodies
    • Get awareness but not flattening or centralizing to designer

— Second pitfall, is the lure of the ‘system-level’

• I’d like you to erase that word from vocabulary

— System-level as being something big or macro and think we need macro policy change to make change in infrastructure

— Tendency to look outside of ourselves, when we make changes in system thinking, but lot we can do to make changes in patterns

— From the book “Emergent Strategy” there are small-scale interactions reflect macro patterns

• Understand how patterns at small scale reflect patterns at other levels of abstraction

— Recognize any intervention and way of working in the system is small

— Example of how practices come together

• Working in hospital in Shanghai and paying attention to what happened with remote and tune into patterns, where doctors and nurses were working— with tiny patterns that reflected larger changes
  • Orientation to rehabilitation shifted way of working

— Pattern at small scale reflects bigger systems, and small part that has ripple effects

— Tendency towards one next thing, by thinking systematically

— Focusing on next big transformation to shape and moving into Horizon 3 of preferred future

• Lovely model, but conflate it from A to B model, and in doing so, replacing old with new

— Aspiration to replace physician centric to patient centric, but maybe we need a planet based system

 

— We are also subsuming variety of system into “one-word world”— subsuming all other ways of being and eroding plurality of what was there

• Really important and working with plurality, as opposed to defuturing

— Having one big thing in system, erasing horizontal possibility, and eroding ability to adapt over time

— Working with idea of uncommons in design and idea of heterogeneous ground where many things happening and things are constantly re-negotiated

• Work with creating kind of structures in a constructive way

— Taking over empty ward of mental health hospital where people could see different scenarios of mental health and exhibition around quilting

• Reflecting traditions, ancestry, and heritage and uncommon care patterns

— Multiplicity of logic of care, and don’t push one logic over another

• Intention to hold multiple systems and plurality to avoid eroding foundation of creativity and shape multiple futures

— Third problem is problem with projects

• Model of projects in service design and across sectors inherent in linear boxed-in model, and shaping how things work in systems

— Example of Mayo Clinic and group medical visit and quite successful in that patients really liked it,

• But set closure time for project and didn’t have time to attend to ripple effects through prototyping, and people felt disconnected
• Needed advocacy around billing codes, but constraints halted project

— We are not just redesigning systems out there, but also systems we work with for more appropriate and systemic way

— Promising framework is design research programs

• Kind of drifting frames for design experiments and programmatic approach in Norway, and not being guided by project delivery or outputs
  • Instead gudied by key questions of collective inquiry and situated experiments and larger questions, and frame for hypothesis over time

— Example of Agenda 2030 and how to support more future oriented view in Sweden

• Picture with clock and experiment and folks budget cycles were biggest constraints to look future oriented and support you
  • Considering youth were more in school with municipal school system
• Small scale experimentation and more future oriented way for youth to thrive
  • Ongoing drift in frames and work collective inquiry, and connects well with what Luke was talking about
• Listen and tune-in to emergence
  • Different from missions and top-down goal they have and potential that can be done here

— Next pitfall is emphasis on external, and tendency to focus on how we change systems out there

— We are embodied in the systems we seek to change

• Improving experience of youth with mental health issues in Toronto, and built an intervention that was peer positive and shifting orgs to be more peer based

— Co-designing services and be on boards and co-learning process

• Good intentions with doing this

— Tendency to forget how we inhabit systemes and systems inside us are shaping and limiting our ability to shape what is done in system

• Lived experience as white person in Toronto, led intervention that ignored intersection of power and bolster lived experience of mental health
  • Ignoring things like racism and by elevating power of people with lived experience and service user and provider and elevating that, and no intersection

— Go back and look at own positions and assumptions, and look at our own blindness was brought to intervention

• Working with critical reflexivity, and processes to reflect on that
• Role-playing to tweak things and look at systemic chatter influencing approach and more intersectional power shift

— Only through interrogation of own system and building reflexivity

• Doing it in ongoing way as we are only partially aware

— Will push that when we do service design actually often perpetuating own expertise and importance of that in system

— See the above picture of lab around mental health and PSSP systems lab

• Imposing model of professional design as model for all design— and lot of systems taking place

— Having design be imposed and only dominant thing and labs are tiny scale and inadequate to task of shaping systems in everyday life

• Reorientation of service design of stewarding many shapings of system and reflexive about it

— End with pictures in everyday life and shaping of systems happens in dialogue and negotiation and how we are calling each other

• Shaping of systems and capture of streets in Oslo and what to take

— Systems shaped in mundane, and understanding ourselves outside of profession and risk both imposing one-world of design, and missing the boat on how systems shaped every day

 

— If we re-orient our service practice to everyday nature of design and contribute to awareness of how systems shaped and autonomy for systems themselves and help evolve much needed change in systems over time

— Six pitfalls highlighted are

1. Trap of flat map— erasing complexity of system through maps
2. Lure of systems level— abstract too much, and look at big patterns and entanglement in small
3. Tendency toward one next thing— Thinking about how to integrate plurality in ways of working and hold space for ongoing adaptation and embracing plurality
4. Projects— Reconsider own structure and move from project management approach to inquiry and experimentation for more everyday exploration in different ways and facilitating that
5. External emphasis— Practicing critical reflexivity on systems we are happening
6. Consider perpetuation of profession- Reorient selves to stewarding, supporting, and shaping systems in plurality in different ways

— Ways that undermine service design and new era of practice and embody it

— Lot of these themes will be built up in upcoming workshops and dig into questions before we end

 

Questions

1. Thoughts on service design tools and methodology?
   1. We have a method obsession and need to examine ways in how method embedding and reflecting our systems
      1. Embedding market-place logic and question them and rather invite designer to be method-makers than users
      2. Contextual ways of working
2. Coming from academic work, and how did business designer apply this work?
   1. Have had permission to do experimentation outside of existing structure but working on edge of
   2. Ways we can do this experimental work with design research programs, but use them even if project frame and programmatic approach to structure and move that
      1. Role-play of starting smalland shift at small scale and simulation work
3. Examples or evidence you see with embodied practice or methodologies?
   1. Completely embedded in colonial systems, and no real escaping it