Marcela Urbano, Maria Nørregaard, and Tabea Glahs
Oslo Origo | The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Our experience of introducing gigamapping in a public sector digitalisation agency
This action research builds on the interest of the authors to test knowledge acquired through the Executive Master of Systems Oriented Design in their own design practice at Oslo Origo, a public sector digitalisation agency. Here, the authors are employed as in-house service designers. The short paper builds on their hands-on experiences of trying out gigamapping as a technique of systems oriented design.
Through four case studies, the authors describe how they have introduced gigamapping in their workplace. Their learning path of putting the theory into practice made the authors reflect on the context in which a gigamapping session is embedded and how this context influences the mapping process itself, as well as the usefulness of the outcome. The analysis resulted in three boundaries to consider when moving from the classroom theory to practising gigamapping in “the real world”: 1. the inner boundary of the systems oriented designer (as confidence, trust) 2. The immediate boundaries of the workplace (as hierarchy, relations and culture) and 3. The wider boundaries of the organisation (as power dynamics, flows of money, paradigm). The suggested boundaries and the questions that come with them might be useful for other designers who want to start experimenting with systems oriented design at their workplace.
KEYWORDS: systemic design, public sector, gigamapping, service-ecosystems, boundaries