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About this Repository

This website brings together RSD and systemic design in a continuously updated repository. Articles are updated with the proceedings of the annual Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium, RSDx sessions, and other Systemic Design Association (SDA) events. It serves as a searchable repository of peer-reviewed work in systemic design. SDA also publishes Contexts—The Systemic Design Journal.
If you are looking for a specific article and need help finding it, please contact Cheryl May, RSD Editor.

Through the initiatives of the Systemic Design Association’s (SDA) board of directors, host organisations, systemic designers and researchers, the RSD archives represent a repository for hundreds of independently produced contributions within the development of the systemic design field. RSD symposia have been hosted by organisations in Canada, India, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Getting started
The collection’s genesis goes back to the first RSD, organised by Birger Sevaldson as a graduate seminar at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). Since then, the annual call for contributions has received many submissions representing leading research and cases in systemic design and related design and systems disciplines. The discourse community was formalised when a small group connected AHO and OCAD University to form the...

Regeneration Through Relationality: Re-socialising systems of food provision for ecological regeneration

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Edona Arnesen

Can systems of food provision in our modern age, to any extent, be and behave in ways that have more positive than negative influences on nature, environment, climate, and health? If we believe that it can, what does that look like? What foundation must be in place to support this net positive way of being and acting that forges regeneration? We need to support Earth’s regeneration of her own natural systems; the soils, the water flows, the biological, chemical and nutritional cycles, and the complexity that builds resilient ecosystems. Closely coupled with this is our need to redefine the value of our food, first and foremost in terms other than monetary. “Systemic design is emerging as a promising approach to intervening in regenerative systems change”, writes Fitzpatrick, Luthe and Sevaldson (2024), pointing to how diverse scientific and experienced knowledge is needed. Research also needs to follow the first movers in order to learn, rather than looking for transition levers in existing, traditional business models and supply chain structures. 
Regenerative systems of provision are characterised by being place-based and operating on nature’s premises, within the planetary boundaries and above the social foundation. They’re flexible and dynamic, continually being shaped by their surroundings...

Feminist Pragmatist Stories and Strategies for Social Systems Design

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Danielle Lake and Judy Whipps

Recent historical analyses have uncovered several feminist pragmatist social system design strategies that have transformed the socio-political landscape across generations and geographies. However, more thorough engagement between this scholarship and the systemic design community is needed. Thus far, few have sought to study the long arc of past social systems design initiatives to uncover key strategies for relational design initiatives today. 
This paper begins the work of filling this gap by sharing stories of two feminist pragmatist social designers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jane Addams and Mary McLeod Bethune. Located within the United States of America and representing disparate social identities and experiences, their stories and social design efforts visualise relational strategies that seem pivotal for cultivating participatory systemic social change. Considered one of the founding feminist pragmatists, Jane Addams (1860-1935) designed responses to the social challenges of her time and place through diverse local, national, and international networks. Working closely with others, her innovations had a long arc of impact, changing social conditions first in Chicago, then nationally and globally. Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) drew on the relational power of African American women’s clubs to move the U.S. government towards racial and gender justice in the...

Community Empowerment: Multi-Stakeholder Co-Creation in Participatory Design for Agricultural Landscape Renewal in Old Residential Communities

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Yue Ma

China’s urban development has now entered a new era of stock renewal. With a vast number of old residential communities existing, the traditional top-down community development model can no longer meet the demands of current and future urban renewal. Existing designs are often confined to the physical spatial level, while public participation remains superficial and infrequent. Therefore, there is an urgent need to explore new models of community development. Based on community empowerment theory, this paper selects the Lunan Community in Chengdu as a research sample. Through methods such as observation and semi-structured interviews, it conducts an inductive analysis of community issues. Guided by community empowerment principles, the study constructs a multi-stakeholder collaborative organisational model. It views the community as a complex collaborative system, examining the roles and interactions among government, neighbourhood committees, residents, and designers within the empowerment process. This approach fosters effective cooperation among diverse actors and stimulates residents’ proactive engagement. The findings are ultimately demonstrated through concrete design practices. The research aims to enhance the regenerative capacity of old residential community spaces, achieve sustainable community renewal, and thereby explore new paradigms and implementation models for the systematic revitalisation of old residential communities.
KEYWORDS: Community Empowerment, Participatory Design, Old...

Practice with Feeling: Accessing emotion as data through somatic inquiry in systemic interventions

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Rachel Lilley

How can emotions and embodied awareness be engaged as meaningful data in systemic interventions? Drawing on her work in mindfulness, behaviour change, and somatic inquiry, Rachel Lilley invites participants to consider how paying attention to feelings and bodily experience can open new pathways for systemic learning and practice.
Rachel was a keynote speaker at RSD13 in Oslo, presenting Toward a Fourth Wave of Systems Thinking for Systemic Design. She also contributed to ARC25 as a co-author of the Sightlines article, Three Layers of Systems Thinking, with Gerald Midgley and Raghav Rajagopalan.

PROFILE

Rachel Lilley
Birmingham Leadership Institute, University of Birmingham
Rachel Lilley is an Associate Professor at the Birmingham Leadership Institute, a Systems Thinking and Leadership teaching and research centre at the University of Birmingham, UK.
She is a practitioner-researcher in systems approaches and systems leadership and also the Programme Director for an innovative transdisciplinary Master’s Programme combining Systems Leadership and Systems Practice. Rachel’s high-impact research examines human decision-making, systems thinking capabilities, and behavioural change. It has supported policy design and practice, community initiatives, and leadership development at all levels. She has a particular interest in building capabilities to address climate and social change.
Rachel is an expert in human sensemaking, with specialist knowledge in cognition, consciousness, and...

The Community-Embedded Classroom as a Site for Social Innovation Labs

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Sean Geobey

This paper provides an active example of a place-based social innovation lab process embedded in a pedagogical community. Post-secondary institutions house talented people and specialised knowledge that are valuable for advancing progress on wicked problems, yet these capacities are often difficult for those outside academia to access. As a parallel challenge, post-secondary institutions face legitimacy issues from multiple directions, many stemming from their perceived lack of relevance to society as a whole. A place-based social innovation lab embedded within a post-secondary context brings these together using systemic design to change relationships between on-campus leaders, community members, and students. While this builds upon work-integrated learning, community-based research, and knowledge mobilisation to achieve teaching, research, and service goals, it takes an integrated approach to doing so. In this, the paper conceptualises post-secondary institutions as existing within nested systems of communities, economies, and ecologies, while, in turn, containing further nested systems of faculties, programs, and classes. From here, the focus moves to the transformation of a core site for post-secondary activity, the classroom, into a safe-fail site for problem-focused niche developments that span boundaries between students, researchers, and community members. The curriculum for this boundary-spanning, problem-focused approach to classroom engagement will be outlined,...

Object-Oriented Storytelling for Systemic Interventions: A case study with UNDP’s Strategic Innovation Unit

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Hannah van der Sluijs, Sine Celik, Simone Uriartt, and Peter Lloyd

The UN Development Programme, operating at a global scale, is transitioning to a new approach for tackling complex national and international challenges. This involves moving away from single-point solutions (initiatives) to a more flexible, multi-layered approach called ‘portfolios’. However, the transition has not been easy. This action research project, based in a number of countries with UNDP projects, explores how the portfolio approach can be made more accessible and comprehensible for UNDP Country Offices. Through examples that range from gender equality, waste management, and green transitions, we analyse how objects, and the stories that they unlock, can play a role in framing systemic understandings for a far wider range of actors and stakeholders than the portfolio approach currently allows. We design a workshop as a research action to demonstrate how object-oriented storytelling can enhance systemic understanding and set the foundation for more effective interventions.  

KEYWORDS: objects, storytelling, systemic design, UNDP system and portfolio

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Systemic Assessment as an Ethical Compass in the Design Process

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Juan de la Rosa

Recognising the systemic nature of design as a starting point, this paper establishes a theory-based framework of analysis of the level of impact that design actions can produce in different systemic aspects defined in the correspondent literature. This matrix of assessment of systemic aspects and levels of impact is presented as a tool of initial risk analysis for designers (particularly as a pedagogical tool for those in formation), to create awareness of possible unintended consequences of the work done and the possible need for a deeper analysis through the process of design and ethically address those actions beyond classical approaches. As a result, the paper also explores the current validity of previous work of categorization of design, like the orders proposed by Buchannan based on complexity and measure of influence inside a system and introduces some alternative points of conversation regarding possible ways to redefine those orders.

KEYWORDS: assessment, ethics, design education, methods.

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The Future of the Food System in Southeast Louisiana: Applying the Three Horizons with a farmers’ market

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Mikal Giancola, Eve Pinsker, Peter Jones, and Elisa Muñoz-Miller

From 2020 to 2023, the local food system, including production and access, in southeast Louisiana was disrupted by COVID-19 and Major Hurricane Ida (2021). In addition, as many as 4,000 square miles of coastal land will disappear in the coming decades (i.e., sea level rise, coastal subsidence, and hurricanes). Urgent crises (COVID-19, Hurricane Ida), combined with slower-moving ecological degradation, are how climate change will continue to affect this region and the planet. Given this, the authors posit that resilience alone is insufficient for sustaining the food system in the region, and that the Three Horizons, a systems transformation method, may help communities sustain local foods. This was conducted as part of an action research dissertation with the New Orleans Food Policy Action Council as the action research partner. Methods included two site visits at a farmers market in New Orleans, rapid-intercept interviews with market attendees, an in-depth interview with the farmers market director, and an online facilitated discussion with food systems leaders. Results for the Current Unsustainable System, Horizon 1, indicated that the farmers market facilitates healthy food access via nutrition incentive programs, promotes small businesses, and creates a ‘sense of community’ for market attendees. At the same time, the...

AI Waste: The invisible hyper-linear model of Generative AI

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Michele De Chirico and Annapaola Vacanti

In the field of emerging technologies, the environmental and social impacts of the digital domain are becoming a critical area of investigation. Specifically, we aim to initiate a debate on the invisible, hyper-linear consumption model intrinsic to Generative AI, highlighting the implications of a phenomenon that has been little explored so far but is of growing relevance in the context of a global polycrisis that requires urgent and strenuous rethinking at multiple levels. The goal is to stimulate multidisciplinary reflection on the policies, directives, and design practices necessary to address the resource waste generated by these systems, in line with the principles of sustainable digitalisation and circularity.
Despite circularity being a well-established principle in the design of material artefacts, its transposition into the digital domain at the current state does not have a relevant correspondence. Ongoing research by the authors reveals how the immaterial infrastructure of the digital, often perceived as an “intangible cloud”, embodies a significant consumption of energy, materials, and physical space. Generative AI represents a critical field of study, given its tendency for hypertrophic content production that, if discarded, translates into an unprecedented waste of resources. Generating images is one of the most energy-intensive work of generative AIs:...

What is Responsible Design Education?

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Luke Feast, Bo T. Christensen, Peter Gall Krogh, Colin M. Grey, and Linda Nhu Laursen

From being an ideal, it has become imperative to act responsibly in all matters in society. While responsible design is described as responding to the needs of and challenges faced by society, the understanding of what a responsible design education entails is still unclear.
In this paper, we investigate the scope and meaning of “responsible design” in design education through a mixed-methods study incorporating a scoping review and a participatory workshop. The scoping review analysed 62 studies on responsible design education covering dimensions including ontology, outcomes, audience, assessment, content, and pedagogy. The participatory workshop involved 12 design academics sorting and discussing key quotes extracted from the literature.
The findings suggest that responsible design education should develop students’ ethical awareness and an understanding of design’s systemic impacts. However, there is tension between prioritising user needs versus broader systemic effects and between ethical reflection and technical production. The content may include ecological literacy, stakeholder values, ethical frameworks, and professional ethics. Pedagogy emphasises real-world projects, stakeholder collaboration, workshop activities exploring ethical dilemmas, and scenario-based activities.
We suggest that future research should investigate institutional factors shaping social accountability and develop tailored assessment frameworks. Overall, the paper advances the understanding of responsible design education to equip future designers...

Rapids and Waterfalls: The co-creative process of guiding systemic design master's thesis projects

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Stine Moons, Maud Gruyters, and Alexis Jacoby

The growth of systemic design as a discipline makes more and more design students choose a master’s thesis project in this field. This evolution is also visible at the department of Product Development in the faculty of Design Sciences at the University of Antwerp and brings specific challenges and opportunities for the department and for design education more broadly. To get a better idea of those challenges from the perspectives of the students and supervisors, they were asked to give their perspective on the guidance of systemic design master’s thesis projects (SDMTP’s), their evaluation, the personal growth of the students and their satisfaction with the process, the results, and the impact. The findings reveal that students struggle with a heavy analysis phase and the transition to synthesis and design. They find visualising complexity and storytelling challenging, as well as connecting with the actors of the system they design for. Secondly, it became clear that the guiding style of supervisors and the evaluation criteria for SDMTP’s need to be revisited. Lastly, this type of master’s thesis projects asks a certain maturity and resilience of the students, and they experience a significant growth process both personally and as designers in the world,...

Transition Templates: Pathways to net zero+

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Joanna Boehnert

Transition Templates: Pathways to Net Zero+ is a research project that uses systems-level forms of design to envision dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in five sectors of the UK economy. This paper reports on the first year. The five sectors are: 1) Home Energy; 2) AI & Digital; 3) Food; 4) Fashion; and a fifth sector to be confirmed in 2025. They are all approached as socio-technical systems that function as intersecting and interdependent ecosystems across scales and domains. Transition Templates (TT) is based on the premise that energy transitions require coordination across diverse communities, fields, and sectors and that these are difficult to achieve within current business models. We use systemic design and transition design approaches to develop templates to support decarbonisation strategies for socio-technical change in energy systems. We do this with a four-step process using unique TT Ecosystems Frameworks (TT-EF) for each sector. Each TT-EF is used with a TT Four Futures Frameworks (TT-FFF) to envision pathways for decarbonisation and wider regenerative transitions. The work aims to help organisations and institutions direct transitions by envisioning, designing, assessing, and communicating different levels and/or stages of transition. The pathways strategy guides best practice. The Transition Templates method...

Unveiling the Two Stories: Contrasting approaches to systems oriented design in design universities and military staff colleges

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Thomas Slensvik and Anders McD Sookermany

In today’s rapidly changing world, understanding and navigating intricate systems is crucial for military and design professionals. SOD integrates systems thinking into the design process, providing tools to tackle multifaceted problems. This paper explores SOD application in two educational settings: the Norwegian Command and Staff College and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). By examining how SOD is implemented and experienced in these contexts, we aim to uncover insights for developing SOD pedagogy and practice.
Design and military education present unique challenges and opportunities for SOD application. Design students, with their creative and visual thinking backgrounds, often excel in divergent thinking, generating ideas and visualising complex systems. However, this may lead to difficulties in convergent thinking and making decisions. Conversely, military students, trained in structured environments, excel in convergent thinking and quickly arrive at actionable solutions but may struggle with open-ended tasks requiring divergent thinking. These differences underscore the need for tailored educational approaches to effectively teach SOD in diverse contexts.
This study employs a comparative case study methodology, drawing on data from observations, interviews, and student reflections. We analyse patterns and tensions in these educational settings, contributing to the ongoing development of SOD as an approach for navigating complexity...

Transition Templates: AI & digital pathways to net zero+

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Joanna Boehnert and Alistair Alexander

AI can be seen as the ultimate and most extreme manifestation of extractive technological accelerationism. The prodigious energy demands of running AI infrastructure threaten to eclipse the decarbonisation agenda, as the construction of new data centres multiplies energy use. The AI & Digital sector is one of five sectors under review in the Transition Templates: Pathways to Net Zero+ research project. Transition Template (TT) maps decarbonisation pathways in a four-step process. In this report, we describe how we use this preliminary TT process, as described in greater detail in a second RSD13 TT report, to map energy pathways for the AI & Digital sector. AI & digital futures will be determined by the material and energy requirements of digital technologies to a degree that remains underexplored. Using tools including the Transition Templates Four Future Framework (TT-FFF), the research focuses attention on the ecological context and consequences of AI & Digital in ways that explore the aspirations and promises of AI while considering boundaries of resource and energy requirements. We focus on any possible decarbonisation of the sector, while keeping in mind how this sector’s energy demands impact the renewable energy requirements of other sectors. The TT Four Future Framework pushes...

Think Big, Start Small, Scale Deep

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Perin L. Z. Ruttonsha

While global sustainability transition is underscored by an urgency to achieve critical targets for systems change within a short timeframe, maintaining lasting wellbeing over the long term also entails reorganising processes and patterns of human civilisational development, across a complex planetary web. Think big, start small, scale fast has been commonly recited within the domains of design and innovation. By combining this phrase with the scaling deep concept from social innovation, we arrive at a pithy and salient mantra and meme by which to catalyse social learning and systems change―think big, start small, scale deep. This is intended to encapsulate responses to conditions of global complexity, with the potential to achieve greater accuracy and impact.
Here, the concept of scaling deep is framed around the understanding that challenges of sustainability are inherently complex; meanwhile, to render processes of transition both tractable and accessible across a range of contexts and scenarios, these should be implemented in increasing levels of depth and complexity, relative to the existing knowledges, capacities, and resources of diverse stakeholders. Finally, the notion of scaling deep situates innovation beyond conventional sustainability performance targets, and short-term solutions, instead deconstructing related challenges from their roots, and positioning processes of transformative change...

The Details Are Not the Details. They Make the Design. And They Make the Systemic Effects

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Sigrun Lurås

Unveiling the impact of user interface design in high-stakes settings through the Helseplattformen case
This paper addresses the importance of considering how design details affect the whole. Using the electronic medical record “Helseplattformen” as a case, I explore how the quality of user interface elements can cause systemic effects in the broader system it is part of. Since its introduction in 2022, Helseplattformen has faced criticism over its impact on job performance and patient safety. This study analyses issues with the Helseplattformen user interface found through a document review. The findings have been analysed using the systemic model of the design situation, human performance theories, and knowledge of good interaction/UX design for high-stakes settings. The case makes visible the critical importance of user interface details in such systems. The details directly and indirectly influence the systemic effects of the system designed for, potentially leading to serious, unexpected drawbacks, and even perverse results. The paper concludes that systemic design is crucial for the design of user interfaces utilised in high-stakes settings. It helps make connections leading to systemic effects visible, and aids in creating designs that achieve intended outcomes and in developing actions to prevent or mitigate unintended consequences. 
However, current systemic design...

Systemic Thinking As A Methodological Tool In Architectural Education: The paradigm of Ekistics’ theory within architectural design courses, focused on the typology of housing

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Chrysi Nikoloutsou, Malvina Apostolou, and Gianna Siapati

Constantinos Doxiadis developed Ekistics as an interdisciplinary approach to interpretating and planning human habitats. His theory could be directly linked with systems thinking methodology, since cities and human settlements are regarded as complex systems of interconnected networks. Characterized by feedback loops, non-linear relationships and dynamic intercorrelations within various sub-systems, these interactive networks could be analysed through the lens of a systemic approach.
The analysis of human settlements inherently intersects with the issue of housing, and consequently housing typology. At the same time, the study and experimentation with concepts and typologies related to inhabitation is a key element in architectural education and informs an aspiring designer’s architectural identity.
This article proposes an exploration of Doxiadis’ theoretical principles, as derived from Ekistics, in correlation with a system of nodes, based on the current discourse in architectural education. The nodes’ system is created through a thorough study of current architectural composition briefs on a global scale, mainly based on renowned schools of Britain and US, and is organised as word clouds, stating the main terms used in contemporary dialogue on housing design. The study seeks to investigate how the integration of such a systemic approach into the educational process could influence students’ compositional interpretations of...

The challenges of systemic design in homeless social services innovation

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Nicolò Di Prima, Giorgia Curtabbi, Martina Leo, Cristian Campagnaro

The article discusses the findings from a multidisciplinary participatory action-research and co-design process that aimed to reorient and improve the public services system for people experiencing homelessness in Turin, Italy. Designers, sociologists, and anthropologists coordinated the research in agreement with the municipality of Turin and with funding from the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies. The case study presented has been conducted since 2018 through collaborative action-research and co-design activities involving policymakers from the city administration, frontline workers from third-sector organisations, and beneficiaries of public services for people without housing.

KEYWORDS: homelessness, welfare service innovation, co-design, collaborative action-research, prototyping approach

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Systemic Design Through the Lens of Distributed Cognition

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Abhay Vohra

Systemic Design is not an individual endeavour but a team activity. Multiple participants consisting of designers, stakeholders and other actors collaborate and make sense of complex systems.
The process of sensemaking requires the team of stakeholders and designers to engage in cognitive activities like acquisition of knowledge, learning, and forming an understanding of complex systems through creation of visualisations and models. These activities require mental processes that come under the purview of cognitive science.
In cognitive science and philosophy of mind, distributed cognition is a theoretical framework which seeks to understand how cognitive processes use external environment
The systemic design team, through the lens of distributed cognition, can be seen as a distributed cognitive system. The team collectively creates external representations (knowledge, visualisations) that extend cognitive processes into the physical environment. Using this lens, we hypothesise how the systemic design team self-organises, and mutually adapts to make their interactions synergistic, and starts to function as a connectionist network, which leads to emergence of collective intelligence.
In this presentation we will establish the relation between systemic design and distributed cognition by theorising the systemic design team as a distributed cognitive system based on the fundamental working hypotheses framework suggested by (Heylighen, Heath, Van Overwalle...

Systemic Design for Change in Community Care for Older Adults: the Shanghai Jing’an ‘Five-bed linkage’ Care Model

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Jing Chen, Wen Lu, Min Hu, Qi Chen, Amina Pereno, Silvia Barbero and Long Liu

The Linfen Community is situated in the ‘shanty kingdom’ of Zhabei District, towards the northern part of Shanghai's city centre. In 2015, Zhabei District merged with the economically affluent Jing'an District to form the new Jing'an District. This district's demographic structure resembles an ‘inverted pyramid’, with a significant proportion, 41.5% of its population being older adults aged 60 and above. As one of the foremost areas in Shanghai to confront profound ageing challenges, the Linfen Community Health Service Centre is at the vanguard of fostering innovations in community nursing to address the healthcare accessibility delays prompted by an ageing population. This research aims to enhance the existing care model by integrating systemic design methodology. It aims to dismantle the ‘last kilometre’ barrier in older adult care, facilitate the transition from China’s innovative ‘Five-Bed Linkage’ service model to a sustainable care model, and forge a new service model while making recommendations for future advancements. By interpreting systemic design tools, it analyses the current state of integrated care services in China and globally. By employing qualitative interviews and utilising stakeholder maps, among other design tools, the study seeks to understand the current service mode thoroughly, identify challenges from a cross-cutting scale...

Systemic Approaches to Architectural Design: Exploring the biophonic theatre

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Ruoxi Li

In an earlier design and practice-based research project entitled "Architectural Landscapes of Resistance: Framing Agency," I created architectural frameworks that were meant to instil a sense of being in a scene or on stage, providing citizens with the opportunity to explore and perform their everyday life through performance. "Landscapes of Resistance" was influenced by the concept of the carnival with its performances that invert power relationships. The project was designed to assist the citizens in taking control of their perceptions and thus resisting external control by the environments they inhabit. The carnival is not merely a platform for performance; it is a framework for the critical enquiry of political, social, and moral issues. During the carnival, residents may gain a deeper understanding of the multifaceted power dynamics, conflicts, and moral challenges that shape their community, exploring possibilities through self-discovery. through theatre.
However, as the "Architectural Landscapes of Resistance" project unfolded as a form of carnivalesque architecture, it appeared to miss an ecological dimension. Conceiving the stage as detached from everyday life, theatrical and carnivalesque performance has historically favoured a worldview that prioritises social and cultural interests over environmental concerns. Nevertheless, performance can acknowledge complicity and engage in self-reflection. It has the...

Some Design Considerations for Concept-Forming and Concept-Sharing in Discursive Agents

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Thomas Manning

In the last decade, there has been a growing interest in advancements made in artificial intelligence via modern natural language processing techniques utilising artificial neural networks in the form of large language models. This has led to the emergence of conversational technologies like ChatGPT, which mimic aspects of the conversational processes that occur between humans. However, it is contended that the model of conversation proposed above is inadequate as a model of human-like conversation. Already, far simpler models are found in the context of autonomous agents and multiagent systems theory (AAMAS), whilst more primitive are better representations of the types of primordial interactions found before the development of conversation proper. But whilst these developments are on the right track regarding replicating the emergence of actual conversational systems, there already exists a preexisting methodology so far not utilised in the context of AAMAS that could be used which better replicate the kind of conversations we humans have with each other. Thus, conversation theory (CT)—which is a cybernetic theory of concept-forming and concept-sharing via conversation—is suggested in this paper as a systems-oriented and cybernetic design methodology that could be used to design and model conversational interactions in AAMAS. Unlike contemporary approaches to...

Systemic & Futures-Oriented Service Design: emerging design patterns for complex and uncertain transformations

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Beatrice Villari, Riccardo Torta, Zijun Lin, Manuela Celi, Victoria Rodriguez Schon, Daniela Sangiorgi, and Manahil Huda

In the contemporary landscape, designers are increasingly dealing with intricate global challenges of varying complexity, engaging directly with the tangible facets of an uncertain and fragile world. This orientation towards complexity and uncertainty regarding the broader repercussions of the design output pushed practitioners to widen the scope of their design activity both temporally and spatially, necessitating the delivery of more effective, equitable, and sustainable solutions. Within this landscape, also Service Design (SD) confronts escalating complexities alongside significant challenges stemming from dynamic shifts within and beyond service systems.
In response to these challenges, western service design practitioners are adopting novel frameworks and methodologies aimed at going beyond short-term thinking and linear cause-and-effect paradigms. These practices signal an expansion of Service Design towards systemic and futures-oriented perspectives, drawing from the disciplines of Systemic Design and Design Futures.
This research delves into this evolutionary trajectory from a phenomenological standpoint, presenting preliminary findings of an inquiry into how service design practices are evolving (or might evolve). It explores the underlying rationale driving practitioners' needs to embrace diverse design strategies while investigating their practical manifestations in terms of tools and frameworks. Nine interviews were conducted with expert Service Design practitioners from design studios, consulting agencies, or academia.
The...

SHIFT to Systemic Practice

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Ryan J. A. Murphy, Lewis Muirhead, and Louise Gallagher

An analysis of acceptance and use of systemic practices in program design and evaluation
This paper explores the adoption of systemic practices in the evaluation of complex change initiatives through the lens of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model. Despite the potential of systemic practices to enhance program evaluation in systemic change initiatives — and the celebration of systemic principles in program evaluation in general — the adoption of systemic practices in many initiatives remains incomplete. This study seeks to understand the barriers to adoption and proposes a framework to facilitate the complete adoption of systemic practices in complex changemaking initiatives. Our analysis reveals that many of the UTAUT2 factors may be critical barriers to the adoption of systemic practices; in turn, practitioners should anticipate these specific barriers when developing projects in systemic design. To address these barriers, we propose the SHIFT framework, a set of five questions designed to scaffold the adoption of systemic practices in complex change initiatives. The SHIFT framework emphasises the importance of setting up facilitating conditions, identifying the habitual practices that need to change, adopting an incremental approach to introducing systemic practices, focusing on the ultimate goal of systemic change when...

Socio-technical Confluence of Design in the Circular Economy

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Isaac Arturo Ortega Alvarado

This paper positions a systemic perspective as a requirement to design for a circular economy. From this perspective, a system is understood as having internal social and technical orders, which simultaneously create contentious conditions for the realization of circular economies while orienting what can be done or not as part of them. These contentious conditions are also the result of questioning what a particular context sustains through its social order and infrastructures. Moreover, the paper proposes that a perspective on ontological designing might provide designers with the faculty to work on the circular economy as a progression that should not divide the technical from the social. Thus, while prioritizations can be made about social or material desired conditions, the result of a circular economy will affect both dimensions and the environment. Understanding what a designing activity intends to change or maintain as part of socio-technical systems may result in a predisposition towards understanding the harm or benefit that designing activities can produce. A systemic perspective can contribute to opening the design discourse for a circular economy in a way that the formulation of new products and services is not an isolated effort made only in alignment with the conditions of...

River Tales: Holistic and participatory approach to foster freshwater ecosystems in the project “CIAK! Sì, parteciPO”.

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Laura Dominici, Matilde Molari, Silvia Pesce, and Elena Comino

Urban rivers provide many ecosystems services contributing to improving the quality of life in cities and becoming landmarks that define unique riverscapes. However, climate change increasingly causes systemic stresses, leading to more frequent extreme events. In this scenario, researchers supported by academic student teams as AkaNoah, are called to get out of universities and collaborate with citizens, local government, and other stakeholders to preserve the quality of natural common goods. This article discusses the importance of a participatory approach and interdisciplinary collaboration between stakeholders to foster environmental and systemic awareness and civic engagement by presenting the case study of the project “CIAK! Sì, parteciPO”. The project, supervised by academics from design, biology and environmental engineering, focused on the co-creation of a short documentary working with 20 young citizens. The goal is to holistically explore complexity and systemic relationships around the Po River in the city of Turin (Italy). Without any specific filmmaking skill, participants worked in teams to co-produce a participatory short movie that immediately communicate citizen’s perspective and voices of various local stakeholders about the civic use of Po Rivers using the emotional power of sounds and images. The group was supported by an interdisciplinary team of mentors who...

Scaling As Emergent Opportunity In And Across System-Shifting Design Projects

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Anja Overdiek, Celina Whitehead, and Liliya Terzieva

System-shifting design (Drew et al., 2021) has been presented as a research stream in systemic design in which different ways of impacting sociotechnical systems can be discussed and developed. One important aspect of this field is to explore collaboration and co-design with diverse system stakeholders in and across projects in order to better understand how to make impact together. In regard to this endeavour, the concept of scaling has been criticised and broadened by different systemic design scholars (Mulder et al., 2022; Lake et al., 2022) and nine types of scaling have been proposed. Our research builds on this work in ‘scaling literacy’ and sets out to contribute by conducting eleven in-depth interviews with senior design practitioners in The Netherlands reflecting on singular or consecutive design projects aimed at shifting a system, and using co-design related to local experimentation. Searching for and analysing how the nine ways of scaling relate to different project phases, and combining the findings of the interviews, delivers new insights into scaling as an emergent opportunity in and across systemic design projects. It also allows the identification of three preconditions for scaling with system-shifting co-design. This leads to the formulation of new theoretical hypotheses and to...

Reversed Time in Systemic Design Activities

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Andrea Alessandro Gasparini

The design community has approached time in various ways. As time has many uncovered facets and characteristics, systemic design research could rethink how to use time as a significant stakeholder in framing solutions addressing complex situations and wicked problems. Using explorative activities as an arena to map and discuss new possibilities in systemic design with a particular mental representation of time, this paper brings new possibilities and insight. Research into how we think and speak about time offers interesting inspiration for designers. An example of alternative space-to-time associations is reversed time. It can be found in a tribe in the Andes in South America that describes, when speaking Aymara, both vocally and with gestures, that the future is presented as behind and past events as in front (Núñez & Sweetser, 2006). This article shows how the use of reversed time, as it brings the past in front of a co-design process and the future “back”, could bring additional value to the generative needs in systemic design. The paper presents two small explorative activities. The goal of the first activity was to firstly address the challenges students of philology meet after their study and secondly observe whether using a reversed time...

Restructuring (Inclusive) Innovation Narratives for Institutional Systems Transformation

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Brogan Ogilvie, Nicholas Spencer, Mark Bailey, and Helen Simmons

Systemic change and transformation have evolved into a prevalent concern for design scholars and practitioners. Whilst this agenda broadens the horizons of design’s potential role and social impact, recent research (both within and external to the design community) has called for greater criticality toward this movement, and the development of research and practice capabilities that allow designers to navigate complex institutional realities. Failing to do so may result in the design being ineffective at best, or at worst, inadvertently reproducing the systems (and their production of harm) it aims to transform.
The work presented in this paper draws on evidence from an ongoing doctoral study that explores the utility of the institutional logics perspective (ILP) for design research and practice. The concept of innovation narratives is proposed and used as a lens to explore the often ambiguous and contradictory landscape around inclusive innovation. This study utilises data generated through a 4-month research placement embedded within a project aimed at establishing an Inclusive Innovation Network (IIN). It presents findings indicating the prevalence of three distinct inclusive innovation narratives within a particular organisational context and generates knowledge on the utility of integrating the ILP with design’s reflective practice. 
This research highlights how, by becoming...

Revealing Uncertainties: The role of urban living labs for systemic design

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Marco Kellhammer

On expanded perspectives from the dance on the volcano
Urban mobility challenges demand innovative solutions beyond traditional design paradigms. This paper explores the role of systemic design, Co-Design, and Urban Living Labs (ULLs) in addressing these challenges, using the “aqt – car-reduced neighbourhoods for a livable city” project in Munich as a case study. The research employs the metaphor “dancing on the volcano” to conceptualise the dynamic and often turbulent nature of ULLs in systemic design. Grounded in principles from Donella Meadows, Birger Sevaldson, and Peter Jones, and enriched by Sigrun Lurås’s “Systems Intertwined”, the study emphasises understanding interdependencies, fostering stakeholder agency, and promoting continuous learning. ULLs, much like a volcano, bring deep-seated issues to the surface and spark critical conversations about underlying conflicts. The iterative and responsive nature of these interventions requires agility, empathy, and continuous adaptation, akin to dancing. The article highlights how ULLs serve as experimental platforms that facilitate real-time testing and refinement of urban innovations. These labs provide a collaborative environment where planners, researchers, citizens, and stakeholders co-create and assess interventions, ensuring they remain responsive to the dynamic urban landscape and foster sustainability transitions. By integrating systemic design principles, co-design, and ULLs, this study aims to develop...

Research on the Design of Sensory Surrogate Applications Based on Behavioural Characteristics of Visually Impaired People

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Lin Lin

In the digital media era, an increasing range of creative scenarios combine design with the senses. Visually impaired people have impaired visual field or low visual acuity, which results in low vision and affects their everyday lives. Through the interactive experience of mobilising the sense of hearing, visually impaired people can generate perceptual intentions and physical responses to objects or spaces, thereby obtaining relevant information.
This paper first analyses the behavioural characteristics of visually impaired people, including their psychological condition, individual adaptability, and mobility. Secondly, starting from the characteristics of sensory compensation, the paper explores the interaction design idea of auditory compensation and tactile compensation with the more sensitive tactile and auditory senses of the visually impaired people to alleviate the cognitive barriers and operational difficulties of the visually impaired people in their daily life, and to make them have a pleasurable psychological experience. After that, the article takes the theory of sensory compensation as a guide and discusses the characteristics, needs, and compensations of the visually impaired group, as well as relevant design cases, etc., to study and summarise the design principles, methods and strategies for the visually impaired group under sensory compensation, in order to provide references to the...

Prototyping as a Designerly Practice to Embrace Divergent Positions in Participatory Systemic Design

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Maria Vitaller del Olmo, Luca Simeone, Amalia de Götzen, and Nicola Morelli

Systemic design processes are inherently plural and diverse. The complexity of contemporary challenges requires collaborative efforts and the engagement of many stakeholders. The numerous actors encompass divergent positions and demands, which may sometimes be contradictory, mutually exclusive or seemingly opposing and degenerate into tensions or frictions. 
The capability of working with divergent positions is becoming imperative to systemic design processes. Instead of resolving the pain points that diversity generates, some authors advocate embracing divergent positions as valuable, necessary, and fruitful. Designers, therefore, need strategies to unfold, embrace, and engage with such positions and demands. 
Prototyping capabilities could be a promising practice for unfolding and engaging with divergent positions in systemic design. The interactions that prototyping facilitates hold great potential to undertake these essential endeavours. In fact, in recent years, some researchers have advocated for an alternative understanding of prototyping when applied to design processes targeting complexity. Instead of the traditional approach of prototyping for inquiry, the authors propose an exploratory approach to prototyping, leveraging some specific prototyping features that are more consonant with systemic design’s characteristics and challenges. 
This paper investigates the effect of applying prototyping from both exploratory and experimental approaches to deliberately unfold, embrace and engage with divergent positions in participatory...

Rebound Archetypes: A card-based tool to help designers think through the rebound effects when designing for sustainability

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Laetitia Bornes, Marcia Tavares Smith, Oliver Bates, Gordon Blair, Catherine Letondal, and Rob Vingerhoeds

In this paper, we present our work in developing a tool to help designers and decision-makers in considering rebound effects within their design or decision process. The concept of the rebound effect is defined in multiple ways. In this paper, it is used to refer to any unintended consequence resulting from an intervention that goes against the initial intention or has social or environmental impacts that are perceived as negative. It is challenging for designers to consider rebound effects during the design process, let alone to engage stakeholders in evaluating the potential risks associated with these effects. The Rebound Archetypes tool, presented in the form of cards, has been designed to support designers in facilitating workshops on rebound effects with “well-intentioned” stakeholders, such as mission-oriented companies, NGOs and public sector representatives. The objective is to enable participants to engage in a process of collective decision-making regarding the potential rebound effects that could result from an intervention. This could be the introduction of a new product, service, technology, strategic decision or policy. The tool also allows participants to understand the associated risks and to collectively decide on actions to take, such as (a) cancelling the intervention or redefining it, (b) attempting...

Pollinating and Connecting: Mapping design-driven practices for inclusive and sustainable societal transformation

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Ambra Trotto, Maria Claudia Coppola, and Caroline Hummels

The paper presents a mapping activity carried out in 2023 by a team of researchers from RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and the Eindhoven University of Technology (EIT) as part of an assignment from EIT Culture & Creativity. The mapping aimed to map design-driven Practices for Inclusive and Sustainable Societal Transformation.
It stems from the need, voiced by professionals in the field from various organisations, to better understand how to face complex systemic challenges in an inclusive and collaborative way, leveraging design and creative practices.
Building on the team’s design expertise rooted in the body of knowledge of Design for Transforming Practices, the mapping investigates the playfield of achieving a sustainable societal transformation, carving out what design practices are currently invited into it and how they are enacted through multi- and inter-disciplinary partnerships.
Given the complexity of the playing field, the mapping takes an iterative, participatory, and reflective stance, making space for participants’ plurality of approaches and questions, and fostering collective resonance. As a result, the mapping portrays a multi-layered landscape, exploring the values and qualities behind organisational and collaborative models that enable conditions for ecosystemic practices of transformation, leveraging culture and creativity to unfold.
This contributed to the co-formulation of recommendations for and...

Policy Design For System Health: Moving from service design to systemic design through policy

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Victor Udoewa

A service designer engages in many different types of design in order to improve the customer and employee experiences and service operations. The types of design could include technology design (visual or graphic design, UI or UX design, content strategy and information architecture), learning design, communications design, prop design, process design, org design, business design, policy design, and more. Business design and policy design are examples of two types of design a service designer can employ either at the service level or at a higher level.
What happens when a public service designer identifies the problems a service policy, a policy at the service level, addresses are also experienced by other services and products in the same government agency, or other agencies across the entire government? When a designer affects other services in an agency or other agencies across the government, the work transitions into the realm of systemic design. However, designing policy as a policy influencer or community member is a very different process than the process of creating policy as a policymaker. We share our framework for policy design by non-policymakers including a systems approach and a critical policy entrepreneurship phase largely absent for policymakers. We share an...