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Closing the Loop

closing the loop spot image

Systems Thinking for Designers

By Sheryl Cababa

Published: February 2023
Paperback: 280 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-959029-88-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-959029-87-8

As design continues to impact our products, services, and solutions at scale, it is more important than ever to understand the systems and context that surround design decisions. Closing the Loop will help you make the invisible visible. It will introduce you to a powerful systems thinking mindset, and provide you with the tools and frameworks to define the systems that surround your work.

As design continues to impact our products, services, and solutions at scale, it is more important than ever to understand the systems and context that surround design decisions. Closing the Loop will help you make the invisible visible. It will introduce you to a powerful systems thinking mindset, and provide you with the tools and frameworks to define the systems that surround your work.

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Table of Contents

Foreword by Kevin Bethune
Chapter 1: The Shortcomings of User-Centered Design
Chapter 2: A Systems-Thinking Mindset
Chapter 3: Systems Thinking and Design Thinking
Chapter 4: Collecting Your Data
Chapter 5: Synthesis and Mapping Stakeholders
Chapter 6: Mapping Forces
Chapter 7: Creating a Theory of Change
Chapter 8: Anticipating Unintended Consequences
Chapter 9: Speculative Design Futures

FAQ

These common questions and their short answers are taken from Sheryl Cababa’s book Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.

  1. What do you mean by systems thinking?
    This is a very good question because you’d be surprised at how many different answers there are to this question. For example, there are ideas and practices oriented around hard systems methodology, which is focused primarily on finding and enacting effciencies within a given system. This includes approaches such as systems engineering.In this book, your main concern will be oriented around soft systems methodology, which can be described as understanding a problem space, creating a holistic view of it, and considering where intervention can happen to create certain outcomes.

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Sample Chapter

This is a sample chapter from Sheryl Cababa’s book Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers. 2023, Rosenfeld Media.

Chapter 1: The Shortcomings of User-Centered Design

As a designer working in technology, I never thought I would see Black Mirror, the BBC show focused on a future of dystopian technologies, used for product inspiration.

I was in an ideation workshop with a client team that was working on a design strategy for augmented reality. We were talking about potential features and adding sticky notes with ideas to a whiteboard. During our discussion, we started talking about potential unintended consequences to features and design decisions. One of my colleagues brought up an example from the show Black Mirror in which soldiers, implanted with an augmented reality system, saw other humans as monsters that must be killed.

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Illustrations