#systemics

A helpful background article about Systems Thinking and how this can apply to design thinking.

Quick tips from the article:

Study the archetypes.

Practice frequently, using newspaper articles and the day’s headlines.

Use systems thinking both at work and at home.

Use systems thinking to gain insight into how others may see a system differently.

Accept the limitations of being in-experienced; it may take you a while to become skilled at using the tools. The more practice, the quicker the process!

it's aged better than it should, in the saddest ways

words come to form only with great effort

and leadened tongue

there is no air

to stir my vocal cords

or carry the words out of my chest

and it hurts, to speak

so I do so only with great effort 

held back as if by unseen force

in dreams I want to speak

instead of drowning,

slow motion, on dry land

with air so thick

I am held still, silently, in place

though I truly want to speak

when I am awake

things are different

words come, filling my lungs

and my vocal cords hum

with potential energy

there is no outer force to stop me

the air is crisp and clear

so full of oxygen that my words spark as they leave my lips 

yet most times still I am silent

the known source holding itself back

I stop myself becoming vocal 

And so, waking, I can speak

but why do I only want to speak in dreams?

why not, in waking life,

Reading through the “Systemics” chapter of The Design Way reminded me of one of my favorite books - Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince. One of the overarching themes of The Little Prince is the contrast between the ability that children posses to be creative and holistic in their approach to the world - seeing the bigger picture that adults fail to (“the whole”), due to their close-minded focus on the day-to-day logistics (“the parts”) of life and career. 

Design, as Nelson & Stolterman state in The Design Way, is “a process of meaning making, because it is engaged in creation from a systems perspective, holistically and compositionally.” This process of applying analog context to concepts, and giving them meaning through relationships in context, is the way that designers are able to see the world as a “bigger picture,” and create solutions that those hyper-focused on the parts, rather than the whole, are unable to form.

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“’Meaning making’ in human experience is dependent on being contained within the analog context. Things make sense only when connected and interrelated. 

Meaning is only attributed to that which is understood through relationships in context. 

This is what a systems perspective does for design. Design is a process of meaning making because it is engaged in creation from a systems perspective, holistically and compositionally.”