Systems Design: An Introduction

You might be wondering how this relates to design. Are designers even equipped to deal with big global challenges? Is anyone? The way I have always viewed it is that at our core, we, as designers, are, first and foremost, problem solvers. We sometimes anticipate what people may need, we listen, and we try to solve problems as elegantly, ergonomically, and user-centred as possible. Steve Jobs once said, "Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works," and I felt that. When it comes to my career, I've made it my mission to solve problems and create elegant solutions, be they physical products, services, or brand campaigns and strategies. In this article, I want to cover the methodology I apply to my work, no matter the domain. That methodology is Systems Design, and while it sounds nebulous initially, I want to give you some idea of why this methodology is an incredible tool for any designer and how you might apply it to your work.

As Donella Meadows describes, systems design is a methodology that focuses on how a system's constituent parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems. A system can be anything from a biological system like our immune system to human-machine systems like bicycles, social systems like interpersonal relationships, and socio-economic systems like stock markets, to name a few. A system is anything that contains elements, interconnections between the elements, and an overall purpose created by these.

One of the leading systems designers today, Hugh Dubberly, has explained systems design in the following way: "A system is a set of elements that someone sees as related, organised in some way, often with a purpose and perhaps with unpredictable results." Many areas and industries benefit from systems thinking from its initial conception as information theory and cybernetics during WWII, when engineers were grappling with complex communication systems to its reimagining in the 60s by the members of the design methods movement, namely Horst Rittle and others at Ulm and Berkeley, who transferred this knowledge into the design discipline. This concept is often seen in areas like architecture, where the integrity of the floor plan is never compromised for the sake of improving a single room. Today, this approach especially lends itself to areas of design where designers are tasked with creating solutions for data-driven products and solutions within large technical ecosystems. Recently, it has been applied to journalism, with the New School introducing a Journalism and Design course in which the application of systems thinking is integral to the overall process.

Systems designer can see both the forest and the trees: one eye on each — Barry Richmond.

Before we go any further into the practical application of systems design, we cannot talk about systems design before addressing the concept of wicked problems. Wicked problems, as defined by design theorist Horst Rittel and city planning professor Melvin M. Webber in the 1970s, are complex social or cultural problems with an unknown number of potential solutions. On a global scale, one can see thorny, seemingly intractable issues like poverty, housing, education equality, and sustainability as wicked problems. In this context, "wicked" denotes resistance to a resolution rather than evil and is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognise.

Systems design is especially well-suited for ideating through wicked problems due to complexity and associated interdependencies - the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems. Systems design dictates that we cannot look at solutions for problems in isolation, as that can have knock-on effects on different parts of the system and potentially create new problems. This way of thinking encourages and enables us to come up with solutions we may not have previously considered when looking at solving a particular challenge in isolation from the system. When we start thinking in systems, we see them everywhere. When we start addressing problems systemically, we can address the cause of the problem and not just the symptom.

Humankind has the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb, to foster far greater interdependency than anyone can manage, and to accelerate change far faster than anyone's ability to keep pace — Peter Senge

Now that we have all the academic stuff out of the way, you might be asking yourself, so what now? What has this got to do with me? How does this apply to my work?

At its most basic, systems design methodology boils down to framing -> mapping -> synthesis. Each of these stages in the process contains various methods and exercises that are needed to achieve the goal for each phase. These are highly dependent on the field you’re in, but a lot of the activities are interchangeable.

• Framing: Set the context, ask the right questions

• Mapping: Collect the information, map the findings

• Synthesis: Understand the findings, plan next steps for delivery

• Delivery

An important note to mention is that while systems design starts sounding a lot like service design, they are different in a couple of fundamental ways. While service design places the user needs at the centre of its methodology, systems design seeks a broader understanding of the overall system dependencies, with the users/customer/client being a component within the system but not central to it. Systems design is still very much human-centric, but it takes into consideration a holistic approach rather than making any one element the central focus.

How might we see a systems design strategy applied across various disciplines:

Visual designer

As a visual designer, this approach lends itself to understanding your client, their context, needs, and how the visual elements exist across their collateral, including physical space. While many of us do this intuitively, there are methodologies we can apply to help with the initial ideation process. When framing, we want to gain a deeper understanding of our client and their context, not just on a surface level, but really understand the core of their work, their challenges with their existing branding, and their overall goals. When mapping our findings, we should address some of these challenges alongside the client's needs. When we synthesise and work towards delivering a solution, we want to make sure we have taken all of our findings on board and work towards delivering a fully formed brand system, and not just design components in isolation. At this point, we want to develop a brand strategy that includes the visual elements but also the language we use, how we position and differentiate the client, understand our target audience, create a purpose and vision, and understand what kind of brand experiences we can provide.

Design Strategist

Design strategy can mean many things depending on the context, varying from visual and brand strategies to digital product strategy. However, design strategy is often a discipline combining corporate strategy and design thinking. The merging of design and business disciplines is frequently seen in large companies, and this multi-disciplinary approach enables greater collaboration and more informed and robust outcomes. Typically, this approach involves analysing internal goals, be they project or organisational, understanding the needs of the stakeholders, and developing a solution plan that is effective, efficient, and sustainable. Design strategists delicately balance user needs with business goals. A methodology like systems design lends itself incredibly well to the work of a design strategist.

Product designer

The systems design methodology is particularly useful when applied to product design. Product designers tasked with creating digital products have to balance many different aspects to deliver a robust product. Everything from user journeys, needs and pain points, technical architecture and limitations, data, information architecture, and usability and accessibility standards. As product designers, we have to juggle a lot of dependencies. Sometimes, the problems we address and solutions we create can have serious knock-on effects on other parts of the system, be it in the product itself or how the user interacts with the product. Mapping out all these components and understanding where the problems lie and how we solve them without compromising other parts of the system lies at the heart of successful product design execution. Akin to digital product designers, physical product designers face similar challenges when balancing user needs and technical feasibility, as well as materials, finishes, overall production costs, and, most importantly, sustainability.

Architect

Architects perhaps understand this concept the best, as they design spaces as a whole, and the integrity of the design is never compromised for the sake of improving a single room. While this comes intuitively to architects, it's important to note that they may not actually use systems thinking methodologies explicitly; however, in the 1970s, professor Melvin M. Webber applied this approach to urban planning. With cities rapidly changing with expanding telecommunications and automotive mobility, Webber used systemic thinking to understand and map the changing user needs and landscapes within cities and communities; in his 1974 paper Permissive Planning, he criticised urban designers for internalising 'the concepts and methods of design from civil engineering and architecture,' with his perspective being that urbanists should be enablers and not designers or controllers of urban systems. Alongside Horst Rittel, he developed the concept of wicked problems and systemic thinking as applied to design. As we look at our city's evolving needs – from shifting priorities to new technologies - systems design is uniquely positioned to support the assessment of existing systems and the introduction of new ones while addressing wicked problems and preventing new ones to the best of our abilities.

Journalist

As we briefly discussed, even areas like journalism can significantly benefit from design and systems thinking. In short, it's how we choose to frame the problem, map it and understand it, and then synthesise the issue to better communicate our understanding to the broader public. Many, if not all, problems we deal with in society are highly nuanced. Yet, we fail to communicate in this way, often encountering very black-and-white perspectives in the media, which has undoubtedly greatly influenced the polarisation of society we are experiencing. Nuance and shades of grey can be challenging to communicate. Still, design and systems thinking can help us evaluate these issues and work towards effectively communicating them.

The area of systems design holds so much potential in so many disciplines beyond just design. Still, designers have the potential to be the facilitators within any industry, and in fact, that is what I find the most exciting about design; we don't need to be the experts in any particular field; we can rely on subject matter experts for the information, but it is the tools and ways of thinking that enable us to be the facilitators of systemic change.