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Expanding Your Design Lens with Systems Thinking
Summary
Many of today’s processes and methods for design thinking and UX design feel limited in a world where we use these approaches to solve complex problems. Systems thinking is a mindset and approach that helps designers broaden their lens and empowers them to increase their impact. In this community call, learn from Sheryl Cababa, acclaimed author of Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers.
Key Insights
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Traditional user-centered design thinking often fails to address systemic forces and unintended consequences in complex environments.
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Systems thinking focuses on interconnectedness, causality, and wholeness, allowing designers to see the bigger picture beyond isolated problems.
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Designers must shift from solely designing products to facilitating multi-stakeholder engagement across diverse expertise and perspectives.
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Broader stakeholder inclusion, especially marginalized or directly affected communities, is a critical lever for successful systemic interventions.
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Systems thinking integrates with design processes by expanding understanding, imagining multi-dimensional interventions, and evaluating impacts holistically.
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Mapping techniques like causal loop diagrams, iceberg maps, and ecosystem maps are practical tools to visualize system relationships and root causes.
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Evaluating long-term effects and unintended outcomes is essential to avoid perverse incentives and harmful consequences, exemplified by historical examples like the cobra effect.
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Alignment within complex, siloed organizations is best achieved by focusing on shared desired outcomes rather than pushing for agreement on all inputs or activities.
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Incentive structures play a crucial role in shaping stakeholder behavior and must be explicitly considered in systems thinking to create viable change.
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Systems thinking differs from strategic thinking but requires strategic skills; systems thinking is broader and more focused on systemic consequences and diverse stakeholder dynamics.
Notable Quotes
"Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions."
"Designers need to be facilitators of other people's expertise and knowledge, not just creators of designed things."
"By myopically focusing on a single part, people are unable to see the elephant in the room."
"There is no silver bullet in system-level challenges; multiple interventions across different domains are needed."
"Community engagement is a powerful lever often left out of systems thinking processes."
"Evaluating interventions must loop back to expand understanding of consequences and radiating effects."
"We have to be deliberate about the long-term change we are creating and consider unintended consequences more explicitly."
"Systems thinking can help us design more explicitly for resilience, as seen in distributed manufacturing of PPE during the pandemic."
"Incentives influence behavior strongly, and lack of awareness about them leads to decisions misaligned with desired impact."
"Systems thinking requires constant engagement with stakeholders; working in isolation will not lead to successful outcomes."
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