THIS IS NOT A CASE STUDY

The case for cases

By some standards, systemic design remains nascent: essential theories, methods, and foundational questions are still emerging, being studied, and actively prototyped. Yet the field is also reaching a point of stabilisation, as practitioners apply its principles and philosophies across a wide range of projects and organisational contexts. This moment marks an inflection in the arc of the field, when case reports can meaningfully contribute to its ongoing development.

Case studies have been a key methodology in systemic design scholarship, leading to numerous insights and contributions. At the time of writing, the RSD repository holds 198 articles qualified as Cases and Practice across all categories: peer-reviewed work, speakers, workshops, and mapping. So what’s different about case reports and writing from what scholar-practitioners (and social impact scholars) have been publishing as case studies in systemic design? The core difference is that case presentations are conventionally wrapped in the academic tradition, posing research questions and developing new theory for scholarly contributions. I suspect many more projects happen in, with, and through systemic design than might be written up and shared in this fashion, and ask: how might we provide a platform for these adventures in systemic design?

Other disciplines and fields—for example, management, medicine, law, public policy, and architecture—have found it enriching to encourage the publication of cases in varying formats. As an opening thought, consider the patterns and design interventions that could be revealed, the co-creative processes and reflexive practices that could be shared, and the potential for narrative, visual artefacts, systemic maps, and practice-based methods to support critical, relational insights and transferability.

These cases are untapped sources of inspiration and knowledge, providing new materials for systemic design teaching and research. The stories can legitimise the discipline, lending credibility and validity to the methods and principles of the field, and the models can illuminate blind spots in other practice-based methods. Reports can also illustrate failures, allowing us to study and learn from them. Finally, the designs and interventions that are the products and processes of these stories are doubtlessly important artefacts that deserve indexing and archiving.

You may have noticed the slightly sloppy reference to “cases” in the above paragraph. This was no accident. Projects, cases, experiences, stories, models, systems, designs, interventions, and beyond—what happens in, with, and through systemic design can take many forms. Contrasting traditional scholarly work with practical cases introduces a tension. Are scholarly articles more rigorous, insightful, and prestigious than case reports?

I say, “No!” While scholarly case studies aim to develop or test theory, practice-based case reports aim to reflect, communicate, and learn from lived experience. Both contribute richly to the field in different registers. Rigour will emerge by holding space for case reports as designers capture and communicate complexity, document and discuss process, and show decisions in context and with critique.