scholarly journals Redesigning Systems Thinking

Author(s):  
Birger Sevaldson

The resent movement of Systemic Design seeks for new synergies between Design and Systems. While the usefulness of systems approaches in design has been fairly obvious, this paper argues that many core concepts in design are beneficial in systems thinking. This seems reasonable when it comes to the concept of Design Thinking. However, as this paper argues, the more practical core concepts of design are equally important. Designerly skills have been regarded as belonging mainly in the realm of traditional commercial design, whereas design thinking has been regarded as useful in strategic management settings. This paper argues against the idea of separating design thinking from design action. The skills and competences of design, such as the composition of the shape and form that are obvious in product design, are central to Systems Oriented Design (SOD). SOD is a version in the emerging pluralistic field of Systemic Design. The Systemic Design movement should recognise the core values of design and integrate them in systems thinking. This integration would contribute to innovation in both Systemic Design and systems thinking. Among the core competences of design discussed in the paper are composition, choreography, orchestration, the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk and open-ended multi-scalar design strategies that allow for both structural and organic development. The paper provides examples to support its proposal for the use of concrete aesthetic principles to guide Systemic Design processes. This paper expands the working paper entitled “Holistic and dynamic concepts in design: What design brings to systems thinking”, which was presented at the RSD3 symposium (2014). 

Author(s):  
Alex Ryan ◽  
Mark Leung

This paper introduces two novel applications of systemic design to facilitate a comparison of alternative methodologies that integrate systems thinking and design. In the first case study, systemic design helped the Procurement Department at the University of Toronto re-envision how public policy is implemented and how value is created in the broader university purchasing ecosystem. This resulted in an estimated $1.5 million in savings in the first year, and a rise in user retention rates from 40% to 99%. In the second case study, systemic design helped the clean energy and natural resources group within the Government of Alberta to design a more efficient and effective resource management system and shift the way that natural resource departments work together. This resulted in the formation of a standing systemic design team and contributed to the creation of an integrated resource management system. A comparative analysis of the two projects identifies a shared set of core principles for systemic design as well as areas of differentiation that reveal potential for learning across methodologies. Together, these case studies demonstrate the complementarity of systems thinking and design thinking, and show how they may be integrated to guide positive change within complex sociotechnical systems.


Author(s):  
Alex Ryan

As designers move upstream from traditional product and service design to engage with challenges characterised by complexity, uniqueness, value conflict, and ambiguity over objectives, they have increasingly integrated systems approaches into their practice. This synthesis of systems thinking with design thinking is forming a distinct new field of systemic design. This paper presents a framework for systemic design as a mindset, methodology, and set of methods that together enable teams to learn, innovate, and adapt to a complex and dynamic environment. We suggest that a systemic design mindset is inquiring, open, integrative, collaborative, and centred. We propose a systemic design methodology composed of six main activities: framing, formulating, generating, reflecting, inquiring, and facilitating. We view systemic design methods as a flexible and open-ended set of procedures for facilitating group collaboration that are both systemic and designerly.  


Author(s):  
Jodi Forlizzi ◽  
Birger Sevaldson ◽  
Alex Ryan

This special issue of Form Akademisk captures some of the systemic design thinking and research presented at the RSD3 conference, held in Oslo, Norway in 2014, and the RSD4 conference, held in Banff, Canada in 2015. These two conferences offered a range of submissions encompassing the fields of design, systemics, public policy, healthcare, and other domains. This body of work explores the emerging renaissance of systems thinking in design. The papers presented here are responses to the world we live and design in, a world that is increasingly complex and increasingly problematic for those in government, industry and academia alike.            We believe that the thinking and intervention developed at RSD3 and RSD4 is well poised to meet these challenges. In this issue, we offer two sets of papers; the first set focuses on frameworks and organizing concepts, and the second set focuses on methods and tools to aid in systemic design.


Author(s):  
Peter Jones

We have joined two issues of FORMakademisk to accommodate two sets of articles developed from remarkable early work presented at the 2013 Relating Systems Thinking to Design Symposium in Oslo. We organized these papers into a theory set, and a set for practice of systemic design, although most of these theoretical works are deeply informed by design and planning practices. The theory issue, Theoretical Evolution in Systemic Design, comprises the perspectives of scholars contributing new work crossing the former boundaries between systems theory and design thinking.


2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Layne ◽  
Abigail Gewirtz ◽  
Chandra Ghosh Ippen ◽  
Renee Dominguez ◽  
Robert Abramovitz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Core ◽  

Jumping, climbing and suspensory locomotion are specialized locomotor mechanisms used on land and in the air. Jumping is used for rapid launches from substrates. Climbing and suspensory movements enable locomotion up, under and through vertically-structured habitats, such as forests. Elastic energy storage is particularly important for jumping and catapult systems and we address the core concepts of power amplification that are exemplified in nature’s extreme jumpers. We examine the diverse mechanisms of attachment that characterize animals that can grasp and adhere to a diversity of structures. We conclude the chapter by examining the integration of biological capabilities with engineering innovations in these systems.


Author(s):  
Deborah Hicks

Leadership is a topic of growing interest to librarians. Its importance is highlighted in its addition to the American Library Association’s Core Competences of Librarianship. Using discourse analysis and insider interviews, this paper explores the discourse of leadership surrounding the development of the Core Competences and its impact on LIS education.Le leadership est un sujet d’intérêt croissant pour les bibliothécaires comme l’en témoigne son ajout aux compétences de bases en bibliothéconomie de l’American Library Association. Cette communication explore à l’aide d’une analyse du discours et d’entrevues internes comment s’articule la notion de leadership dans le développement des compétences de base et son impact sur dans les programmes d’enseignement dans le domaine. 


Author(s):  
Yusuf Cinar ◽  
Peter Pocta ◽  
Desmond Chambers ◽  
Hugh Melvin

This work studies the jitter buffer management algorithm for Voice over IP in WebRTC. In particular, it details the core concepts of WebRTC’s jitter buffer management. Furthermore, it investigates how jitter buffer management algorithm behaves under network conditions with packet bursts. It also proposes an approach, different from the default WebRTC algorithm, to avoid distortions that occur under such network conditions. Under packet bursts, when the packet buffer becomes full, the WebRTC jitter buffer algorithm may discard all the packets in the buffer to make room for incoming packets. The proposed approach offers a novel strategy to minimize the number of packets discarded in the presence of packet bursts. Therefore, voice quality as perceived by the user is improved. ITU-T Rec. P.863, which also confirms the improvement, is employed to objectively evaluate the listening quality.


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