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Your Solution is Showing: Undesigning, understanding, and unknown-ing for systemic insight

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James Stauch

Over the past decade and a half, design practitioners have increasingly embraced (or at least been curious about) systems thinking and associated tools, concepts, and frameworks. My background in environmental design—transdisciplinary, applied, and critical of the status quo—was integral to leading me to see the world through a systems lens. But while both design and systems thinking are core 21st-century competencies, they both contain baggage from the past.
The 55 Minutes is a 20-chapter compendium of systems tools, concepts, and frameworks, aimed at practitioners working in a wide range of fields, industries, and disciplines. Inspired by Einstein’s aphorism that in order to solve a problem—if given an hour—one ought to devote the first 55 minutes of that hour to thinking deeply about the problem. Yet, design processes— much like planning, policy development, venture creation, or other forms of invention and intervention—tend to focus disproportionately on the last metaphorical “5 minutes.” Despite this, there is a natural symbiosis between design and systems thinking that is explored across different themes and techniques in the book. These range from understanding phenomenological inputs (the user experience) to patterning and pattern sensing, to testing safe-to-fail iterations.
In this hybrid presentation and discussion, I highlight how designers can...

Enhancing Dog Human Relationships

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Sayali Junagade, Sripriya Ganta, Leela Krishna Chawan, and Vivek Kant

The relationship between a dog and its owner is built on trust, communication and companionship, making it essential for both their well-being. Strengthening this bond improves a dog’s behaviour, emotional health and overall happiness while also enhancing the owner’s companionship experience and responsibility. We identified an intervention point in the relationship between the dog and its owner, with a focus on comprehending the dog’s feelings.
The primary aim of this project was to enhance dog-human relationships by considering the entire ecosystem of the dog and the human bond. The project created a synthesis map from a detailed study of the dog-human relationships from existing literature and presents an intervention in the form of a smart vest for health, behaviour, and emotion monitoring of the dog. Making these analytics explicit will help humans to understand the dog’s physical and emotional well-being, and thus bond better. Further, we identified different stakeholders, focused on understanding dogs’ behaviour, cognition, perceptions, life cycle and how they influence humans.  We tried to understand how the interactions between the dog and their owners are taking place. Through Giga mapping, we understood how the overall data is interconnected and the relationships between the various points that are connected, as well as not directly connected...

Designing for Mental Well-being

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Shi Hui Saradevi Ng

Leveraging Singaporean culture for transformative care systems among young adults 
In a world of rising stress levels, mental wellness is one of the fastest-growing sectors, highlighting society’s awareness of mental health and desire for better coping. This map focuses on designing a care system for mental well-being, in particular that of Singapore’s young adults and leveraging Singaporean culture to nurture communities of care. 
Psychology originates from Western philosophy’s mind-body dualism, where mind and body are seen as separate entities, a philosophy uncommon in the East. The Chinese acknowledge the interconnection between one’s mental and physical health; hence, interpersonal and intrapersonal harmony is considered part of their well-being. Considering the differing perspectives on mental health, what does designing for mental well-being in Singapore, an Asian country, entail?
Framing this research is the post-pandemic period in Singapore from 2020 to 2025. Singapore’s pandemic lockdown, known as “Circuit Breaker,” resulted in restrictions on young adult activities such as dating and travelling. Amidst uncertainty, young adults navigated career transitions, leading them to reevaluate life’s priorities. The pandemic, however, led to increased mental health awareness among the general public.
Despite improved mental health literacy, 1 in 3 young adults experience poor mental health, highlighting issues in applying skills to...

Seeing the Elephant: Gender perspectives as a systemic challenge in design

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Carla Sedini

RSD14-RSDX ONLINE & RSD14-TORONTO BOOK TALKS

Gendered barriers and opportunities emerge at multiple scales, from institutional practices to professional trajectories and from everyday urban experiences to systemic exclusion.

How is design impacted and has an impact on these? What new perspectives can guide the renewal of design culture and inspire systemic change?

This talk introduces the book Gender Perspectives for a Renewed Design Culture, a collective work that explores gender as both a critical lens and a systemic force within design. The book addresses what is often ignored or underestimated: the structural dynamics that shape women’s visibility, participation, and agency across academia, the design professions, and urban life.
Framed within the systemic design discourse, this presentation positions gender not as a peripheral concern but as a central, interconnected dimension of complexity, equity, and sustainability. In this presentation and discussion, we will “see and acknowledge the whole elephant” to design futures that are more just, inclusive, and resilient.

Editor’s Note: RSD14 participants will have access to a 20% discount on the full book. Also, chapters can be purchased individually.

Profile

Carla Sedini
IULM University
Editor of the book Gender Perspectives for a Renewed Design Culture. Unveiling Dynamics in Academic, Professional and Civic Lives of Women (Springer, 2025).
Carla Sedini owns a Phd...

Oracular Bodies: A collective praxis of futuring

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Cheryl Hsu, Cassie Robinson, and Vanessa Reid

Sometimes we encounter those who seem to live in the gap between worlds. Their bodies are more transparent—diaphanous, flickering in the liminal fascia between many planes of reality. They see and fall in love with unimaginable potential. They try to whisper to us about it, even if we don’t understand. They are faithful to a different kind of clarity and integrity. When they communicate through silence, strange riddles, and koans, it is with gravity and potency that stirs something deep: a remembrance of the future.
If, in accordance with the panarchy cycle, our culture is presently in the Omega Ω phase —a back-loop time of release and re-organisation—what is the unique design praxis called for in this time between worlds? As we navigate this back-loop reality together, things get very weird and non-linear. We learn to surrender to our not-knowing; we remember how to listen to the quiet, sacred wisdoms that arise in our more-than-human entanglements. Rather than orienting from “vision” or what we can clearly see inside the cone of light of the visible, we learn to feel our way via an uncanny “sensing” in the deep, dark territories of the invisible. It is in the gaps between where transversal...

House of Annetta and the Cybernetic Archive

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Fran Edgerly, Aska Welford, and Kate Doyle

In this time in which the “archival impulse” has permeated all representing apparatuses of contemporary media in-formation through our constantly documenting behaviours, it is crucially important to consider what and how we find meaning in the objects we name, in both personal and institutional domains. Where and what is the information in the archive? The notion of the “cybernetic archive” infuses movement in static presentations of the archive by way of the concept of the eigenform, articulated by Heinz von Foerster; objects are “tokens,” seemingly stable forms emergent from social-behavioural (including linguistic) exchanges over time and in change. As the object becomes with and through the movement of behaviours, including the production of language, the archive is becoming perpetually anew and renewed.
In this 90-minute panel, we explore the becoming-idea of the cybernetic archive in the context of the House of Annetta, the former home, work, and archive of the late artist, activist, publisher, and cybernetician Annetta Pedretti. Pedretti finished a doctoral degree, for which she articulated her ideas in a formal dissertation (The Cybernetics of Language, 1981), yet the principal work of much of her later life was in repairing/unfinishing the House and supporting her neighbourhood around it through engagement...

Health Experience Design

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Session 2

Research on Tactile Experience Design: Art spaces for the blind from the perspective of relational ontology by Guanqing Hua, Hongtao Zhou, Xiaotong Zhang

Reflections on Bringing a Relational Perspective: Systemic design work in disability services by Paige Reeves, Rebecca Rubuliak, Ben Weinlick

Untangling Access: Design, policies and the complex landscape of wheelchair service delivery process by Kahmin Ong, Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders, Yvette Shen, Theresa, Berner, Carmen DiGiovine

Session 4

ASIA-PACIFIC TIME ZONE

The Potential of Systemic Design Rooted in Tradition: Implications from the revival of the Sunadori-bushi festival in Suzu City, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, devastated by the Noto Peninsula earthquake by Mami Yoda, Tomohide Mizuuchi

The Value of Systemic Thinking Informed Co-Design: Understanding public dental care experiences by Tania Ivanka

Designing for Mental Well-being: Leveraging Singaporean Culture for Transformative Care Systems Among Young Adults [POSTER] by Shi Hui Saradevi Ng

Early access papers

Explore these and other early access papers, available on the RSD14 papers folder to read online or download.

DRAFT PAPERS

CITE AS
Author(s). (2023). Article title. Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design, RSD14. Advance online publication. rsdsymposium.org/LINK

Technological Systems

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Session 3

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Session 1

Assessing Elusive Things: Socio-technological innovation by Isaac Arturo Ortega Alvarado

Navigating Complexity: Multi-stakeholder collaboration and digital innovation in smart sustainable waterborne passenger mobility ecosystems by Laura Pirrone, Arianna Bionda, Andrea Ratti

Participatory Toward Anticipatory (PtA): The journey of designing participatory technology assessment (pTA) policy deliberation process by Su Lynn Myat, Peter Jones

Session 2

Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Blockchain-Based Systemic Report Verification: Towards an AI protocol for systemic analysis by Martina Liboni, Pier Paolo Peruccio, Francesca Mucchetti

Scale and Proximity: Systemic materials innovation by Rosie Hornbuckle, Sanne Visser

When Science Confronts LLMs: Both knowledge production and trust must co-evolve by Michael Lissack, Brenden Meagher, Hugo Letiche

Towards Systemic Participatory Prototyping: Interactive software by Haochen Gao, Catherine Letondal, Sylvain Pauchet, Ines Di, Loreto, Rob Vingerhoeds

Transforming Technical Systems Through Co-Design: A case study in complexity and collaboration by Kian Ferriolo

Corporate Identity Design: Symbol design? Communicative system design! by Ye Wang, Zhenyan Wang, Shifan Wang

Early access papers

Explore these and other early access papers, available on the RSD14 papers folder to read online or download.

DRAFT PAPERS

CITE AS
Author(s). (2023). Article title. Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design, RSD14. Advance online publication. rsdsymposium.org/LINK

System Transformation

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Session 1
Assessing the Transformative Potential of Methodological Innovation: A neighbourhood-scale experimentation in Helsinki by Elif Erdogan Oztekin, Elisa Lähde
Designers Catalysing Change: Insights from systemic co-design practices in the Netherlands by Laura Niño Caceres, Wina Smeenk, Liliya Terzieva, Anna De Jonge
Design Thinging: A consilient framework of systemic design for a broader understanding and infrastructuring of things with the cognitive light cone by Jean-Louis Soubret
Session 2
Morrows.Today: Co-creating future labs to explore the temporal politics of generative research and regenerative design by Soenke Zehle, Sónia Alves
Exploring the Solution Space: Landing zones as a tool for systemic intervention channels by Maud Gruyters, Stine Moons, Alexis Jacoby, Ivo Dewit
Systemic Lessons from Authoritarian Leaders: Implicit assumptions in systemic design by Victor Udoewa, Palak Dudani
Session 3
Systemic Exploration of Women Associations’ Network Capacity: Case study of the Consulta Femminile of Milan by Ariele Francesca Empirio, Margherita Pillan
Traces of Design: Exploring creativity and innovation in military planning by Thomas Slensvik
Designing Relationalities for Nursing Work Futures: Towards a systemic mindset shift through Transdisciplinary Research and Innovation [MAP] by Atula Jadhav, Deborah Forster, Stein Wetzer, Eva Verhoef and David Abbink

Early access papers
Explore these and other early access papers, available on the RSD14 papers folder to read online...

The Action Tree: Inspiring pathways for systemic transformation

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Patrick Vincent and Juliette Monaco

As part of the think-and-do-tank approach and the Dynamic Living Lab (DLL) framework developed in the Lyon Métropole public innovation ecosystem, the Action Tree aims to inspire organisations facing complexity and uncertainty in their transformative journeys. Rooted in systemic design, it offers a coherent structure that links inner transformation with outer action.
The Action Tree is a visual and open deck more than a prescriptive roadmap. It helps general-interest organisations and communities navigate the diversity of levers available for robust and profound change. It encourages actors to select, combine, and contextualise actions across five complementary branches, ensuring that no dimension of transformation is overlooked.
[Editor’s note: Advance online publication version of Think-and-Do-Tank is available. September 3, 2025.]
Intentions and concept
The Tree is organised into five systemic branches:

Legislation, Organisation & Governance—actions related to rules, structures, and regulations, balancing centralisation and decentralisation while fostering accountability
Onboarding & Community Leadership—practices to engage, empower, and sustain communities of actors
Thinking & Decision-Making Methods/Personal Development & Wellbeing—bridging inner growth, mental models, and collective decision-making for resilient transitions
Action, Innovation & Awareness—prototyping, experimentation, education, and awareness strategies
Commons & Narratives—governance of shared resources and the role of storytelling in creating collective meaning

Together, they form a balanced framework that supports the shift from individual...

Honeybees, Nature, and Arcs of Circularities

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Jude Lombardi and Mariah Guimarães Di Stasi

Honeybees are an example of nature in action. Now, how do we explain their experience? In this paper, we share our understandings about types of Honeybees, their environmental interdependence (sympoiesis) and their dynamics, while embracing the idea of arcs, their impacts, and the impact of arcs. Heinz von Foerster suggested that if there was one concept to describe cybernetics, it would be circularity. This fits nicely with the concept of arcs of impacts and the impact of arcs. One definition of arc, the curve for making a circle. Arcs make circles. As system thinkers, we reexamined our perceptions of Honeybee behaviour from a contemporary cybernetic lens that embraces circularity, dynamics, change, uncertainty, our observations, our conversations and our reflections. These deep conversations led to images that we wish to share with others. We will use these images to illustrate our transformations regarding our understandings of Honeybees, their behaviour, their sympoiesis, resilience, and introduce a unique systemic family tree.
KEYWORDS: honeybees, nature, arcs of circularities, cybernetics

The full version of the paper is currently in development but may be accessed via the RSD14 advance online publication.
The URL for this article is stable and may be used in citations. The final version of the paper...

Action Without a Plan—Passion, intention, cybernetics

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José dos Santos Cabral Filho and Ana Paula Baltazar

Presented as conversation studio on October 12 as part of RSD14-Ecologies of Knowing and during RSD14-Paper Talks, October 8–10, 2025.
The paper explores the dynamic and complex interaction of an academic group with a semi-rural community in Brazil over a five-year period. Rather than presenting a conventional case study, it seeks to retrospectively make sense of an intense and multifaceted experience of acting with and within a community. At its core, the paper investigates the possibility of action without a predetermined plan, guided instead by a flexible and diffuse intention, driven by a passionate engagement. The strategy discussed here only appears as a plan when viewed in hindsight, and it is not meant to be validated as a model but rather to serve as an inspirational example.
The paper begins by contextualising the village and outlining the various activities undertaken during this interaction. These actions—ranging from courses and technical advisory services to workshops, art installations, game design, and more—are examined in detail, highlighting how they were structured, the constraints they encountered, and their perceived effects on the community. These actions operate on multiple levels: symbolic (activating the community’s self-perception), embodied (fostering and exploring pleasurable situations in encounters by playing with differences), intellectual...

Multi-Scale More-than-Human Atlas-Gigamapping

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Elena Porqueddu, Marie Davidová, Hanane Behnam and María Claudia Valverde

Exploring synergies between different mapping approaches
The report discusses two workshops focused on the integration of two mapping tools: the multi-scale atlas and gigamapping. The aim of both workshops was to identify the most appropriate design interventions that could leverage specific urban ecosystems. The first workshop was performed in relation to COLife and Enacting Gregory Bateson’s Ecological Aesthetics projects, within the biotope of the city centre of Stuttgart. The second was held during the RSD13 symposium in Oslo and explored the potential to extend the biodiversity of  Kuba Park into the adjacent built-up area of Vulkan, which lies in the biocorridor stretching from  Maridalsvannet lake to Oslo’s bay, along the Akerselva river. In both contexts, the workshops focused on a more-than-human perspective within central urban environments: participants explored the potential for more-than-human interventions in edible and habitable landscapes. The first part of the workshop was dedicated to an embodied exploration of the site, based on the Multi-Scale Atlas methodology. During this phase, participants walked through the area and individually collected heterogeneous types of experiential data using various techniques such as sketching, photography, and sound recording. In the second part of the workshop, these materials were placed on a site map, along...

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...

Entangled Harmonies: Exploring connection to the more-than-human through interactive bio-generated sound and the inner life of plants

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Willow Gatewood

Entangled Harmonies is an interactive sonic ecosystem that explores human entanglement with the more-than-human world through live bio-data sonification (biosonification) and field recordings. Biosonification involves portraying processes within organisms as music or sound. Electrodes and a MIDI-data biosonification device convert fluctuations in microconductivity in organisms to MIDI notes, which “play” an ever-changing soundscape with digital instruments. Elements of the display invite viewers — I will call them participants, as their interaction co-creates the exhibit — to interact with organisms, to touch, to “play,” and experiment with shaping sound. As both an artistic and cultural medium, technology can augment the ways in which we interact with, experience, and understand non-human organisms like plants and fungi. With Entangled Harmonies, I utilise biosonification as a creative means to translate an organism’s “aliveness” and internal rhythms of beings like plants that are oft-seen as static or mere objects by the human observer. The installation presented at RSD is part of a growing body of work designing sound experiences, song-craft, and performance co-created with the more-than-human. My goal with this project is to uncover the hidden web of connections that build our world and inspire participants to reflect on how they are affected by—and affect—the...

Fostering Democratic Data-Driven Policy Interventions: A collaborative approach to systemic design for sustainable tourism

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Asja Aulisio and Silvia Barbero

The article outlines a collaborative approach to foster a democratic, data-driven learning process between local actors and technical experts, the latter particularly referring to systemic designers, while promoting the implementation of policy strategies for enhancing territorial assets. The adopted approach within the research is applied to a case study of a European project focused on interregional cooperation, examining the interactions between policymakers, technical experts from the design discipline, and stakeholders. The aim is to generate systemic insights not imposed from above but developed through participatory processes, boosting co-creation and facilitating the formulation of systemic interventions for policy strategies rooted in the characteristics of different territorial contexts involved. Furthermore, the paper explores how this collaborative approach can be strengthened using data to understand territorial complexity and boost relational dialogues.
The data-driven analyses conducted led to the development of a set of visual elaborations of the interconnections between territorial assets, data, and information developed by a technical team of researchers and local actors. The research ensures that decision-making is grounded in empirical evidence and contextualised knowledge, which promotes a more adaptive and systemic approach to policy formulation and implementation. In this research context, relationality and positionality are introduced concerning stakeholder interactions, highlighting the...

Examining the Impact of Systemic Design in Post-Disaster Context: Expert reflections via the Delphi method

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Yagmur Gizem AVCI, Cigdem KAYA

Systemic Design is a holistic approach that is increasingly recognised in addressing complex societal challenges. This study aims to contribute to the sustainable development processes of local producers in Hatay -a province most severely affected by the earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 that occurred in Türkiye on February 6, 2023- through the application of the Systemic Design approach. Additionally, the applicability and impact of this approach in a post-disaster context were examined using the Delphi method, a qualitative impact assessment technique commonly used in the social sciences. The earthquakes not only caused physical destruction but also deeply disrupted social, economic, and cultural systems. In regions characterised by production-based local economies, the need for multi-dimensional and system-oriented interventions has become more apparent. In this context, the study encompasses a process conducted within the framework of Systemic Design in Hatay, as well as the evaluation methods applied to assess its effectiveness. The research process was managed through stages structured by the Systemic Design Toolkit developed by Jones and Van Ael (2022), along with methods selected for each stage. Data obtained through current state analyses, field observations, and stakeholder interviews were systematically analysed; strategic recommendations were developed to support the economic and...

Gigamaps For Education In Systemic Sustainable Circular Product Design

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Chiara Battistoni

Systemic Design uses the system mapping method to define the system to analyse and to design its change, called gigamaps. Considering socio-technical systems, it is a process performed to tackle the complexity, to understand problems or new opportunities, and finally design a new or better solution. Usually, it is used to study and visualise large systems as a transportation system, a production system, a social system, a healthcare system,…. and rarely, it is used to support the design of a new product in a product design studio. After an analysis of current system mapping methods, this paper presents two case studies performed in educational contexts – a product design and a planning studio – with the final objective to design systemic, sustainable circular product design. Finally, this contribution presents a methodological approach for designing sustainable and circular products that integrates steps, tools and viewpoints from multiple disciplines. The approach begins with a comprehensive initial design phase centred on system observation, which not only includes the analysis of an existing product but also examines the various actors involved and their relationships, analysing the system’s metabolism through material and energy flows, and exploring interactions across the different scales affected by the project....

The VUCAcanvas: Designing and cultivating viability in complex adaptive systems A practice-ready developmental framework for enhancing human and relational capacity in VUCA environments

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Rik Berbé

Complex adaptive systems (CAS), such as organisations, communities, urban places and ecosystems, face growing challenges in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environments. While theory in evolutionary biology, systems thinking, and complexity science has examined how complex adaptive systems (CAS) function, practical, field-tested tools are still lacking. There is a need for methods that enhance the human and relational capacities enabling these systems to form, adapt, and sustain themselves over time. This research paper presents the full development, application, and evaluation of the VUCAcanvas, a practice-ready framework designed to address this gap. Developed over six years of professional practice, the framework was designed and validated through nine structured interviews, six design sessions and eleven participatory workshops across sectors and countries.
The VUCAcanvas identifies six essential capacities: adaptive, sensitive, resilient, connective, diverse, and cooperative that support a CAS to balance stability and change, enabling emergent solutions, and strengthening long-term viability. Its design emerged through iterative cycles of prototyping, field testing, reflection, and refinement. Key turning points included reframing capacities for diverse contexts, integrating visual tools such as canvases and Duplo® bricks to aid group dialogue, and refining terminology for cross-cultural clarity.
Throughout its evolution, certain features consistently proved effective, such as surfacing hidden...

Introducing Holon Analytics

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Jan Berlage

This paper introduces the concept of Holon Analytics as a methodology for combining systems analysis, systems design, and strategic foresight. After providing a brief background, the paper aims to explain this new tool, starting with a summary of the concept of a holon, which refers to understanding a focal system as both a system of parts (sub-systems) and as part of a larger system (super-system). The paper then outlines the foundational approach of Holon Analytics, explaining its analytical process, which consists of two distinct phases: Holon Analytics 1.0 and Holon Analytics 2.0. Each phase is visualised using a different metaphor to illustrate the specific task at hand, and the process is arranged into a sequence of steps accessible to the user.
The first phase of Holon Analytics 1.0 starts with an outside-in analysis from the current-day perspective of the focal system’s performance and goal attainment. This phase focuses on understanding the relationships among the system’s constituent parts (endo-structure) as expressed by the degree of congruent behaviour. A metaphorical framework is used to map and visualise these relationships, providing insights into the system’s efficiency and alignment with its goals. Additionally, this phase considers improvements to the relationships and their impact on the...

Understanding Organisations Through Systems Oriented Design: Strategic universal design compliance assurance, a longitudinal analysis

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Linda Blaasvær, Miriam E. N. Begnum, Karina Ludwig, and Radostina Tsvetkova

This paper explores how systems-oriented design (SOD) can be used by organisations to analyse and engineer compliance assurance. The study draws on experiences and strategic work from the Universal Design team at the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV), framed as a longitudinal case study. Our previous work (Ludwig et al., 2020) revealed that the system lacked sufficient mechanisms to support universal design compliance. In response, a strategy for system interventions was developed to create a balanced, compliant and stable system blueprint.
This paper investigates the systemic mechanisms that emerged from these interventions and examines whether they led to the intended system changes. The case study employs GIGA-mapping and SOD theory to support continuous, longitudinal system analysis, focusing on mechanisms for ensuring compliance with legal regulations on universal design in Nav’s product development. A developmental systems evaluation approach facilitates improved organisational compliance. To analyse the effects of the interventions, we evaluate their systemic impact (leverage), their synergies and whether system resilience has been strengthened.
Three contributions are made:
1) Reflections on Nav’s system for ensuring universal design compliance in 2025 compared to in 2020. We find that system mechanisms for universal design have improved over this period, and that the organisational focus on...

Cultivating Capabilities for Co-Design: Evaluating a multi-year professional learning program in a regional university

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Emma Blomkamp, Amanda Martin, Louise King, and Laura Fairbrother

This evaluation report examines how co-design capabilities evolve within a university by implementing a multi-year professional learning program. Using Most Significant Change (MSC) as an evaluative methodology, we trace the emergent impacts and relational transformations that occurred as staff at a regional Australian university engaged with co-design principles and practices between 2021 and 2024. The evaluation captures how participants moved from basic skill acquisition to becoming systemic change agents who could support others in integrating co-design approaches into their work. This relational evolution created ripple effects that extended beyond the initial participants, transforming teaching and learning practices across the institution. Our findings reveal that building co-design capability requires attention to individual mindsets and organisational conditions, including leadership commitment, safe spaces for experimentation, and responsive feedback mechanisms.
The evaluation identifies seven domains of change occurring at personal, professional, and organisational levels, from ’embracing the grey’ and practising empathy, to creating safe environments and shaping organisational culture. By analysing participants’ stories of significant change over time, we demonstrate that building co-design capability follows non-linear arcs of impact that involve experimentation, reflection, and adaptation cycles. This case study contributes to understanding how design capabilities spread and mature within large organisations, highlighting the temporal dimensions...

Mapping Relational Dimensions of Systemic Co-Design Practice

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Emma Blomkamp

This paper introduces the Co-Design Maturity Model as a framework for understanding and expanding relational competencies in systemic design practice. Drawing on both theoretical foundations and practical applications, the model maps five levels of maturity across individual, team and organisational dimensions. Central to this framework is an understanding of co-design as fundamentally relational work that requires careful attention to power dynamics, cultural safety, collaborative practice and collective meaning-making.
The model responds to three key challenges in contemporary systemic design: shifting from expert-driven to relational modes of working; building cultural safety and power literacy; and sustaining collaborative practices within traditional organisational structures. Unlike existing design maturity models that primarily align with business metrics, this framework emphasises the relational and emergent competencies necessary for navigating complex adaptive systems. It acknowledges the need for systemic approaches to organisational development, drawing on decolonial perspectives along with insights from complexity theory and research on embedding design capacity in the public sector.
The model was developed through collaborative inquiry with practitioners, employing an iterative process of investigation, action and critical reflection. Rather than creating a normative index for benchmarking, it functions as an educational and reflective tool. Early applications reveal the model’s value in supporting consideration of relational...

Transition Templates, Year Two

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Joanna Boehnert

Energy Transitions in Organisations and Sectors
Transition Templates is a collection of visual tools for collaborative work in decarbonisation. The Transition Templates: Pathways to Net Zero+ research project (2023-2026) uses systems-level forms of design to support organisations envisioning, planning, and implementing decarbonisation agenda in five sectors of the UK economy: Home Energy; AI & Digital; Food & Agriculture; Fashion & Textiles; and Higher Education. Working with service design consultancy Livework, the project uses systemic and transition design approaches to bring expansive and ecologically oriented lenses to energy transition processes. We use net zero “+” to refer to decarbonisation agendas that also address wider ecological emergencies – beyond the narrow specificity of Net Zero. The work-in-progress presentation provides an update on the second year of the three-year research project, describes the progress and processes, and reflects on emergent results and conclusions. The four-step Transition Template process prompts mapping activities for collaborative design of energy transitions. The templates take a modular format whereby participants can engage with any of the four stages depending on their context, interests, and priorities. Over the last year we have revised each of the four steps and developed the processes in all five sectors. The templates are being...

Beyond Metrics: Rethinking purpose, innovation, and social impact evaluation in SMEs as an evolving and relational design process

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Beatriz Bonilla Berrocal, Annalinda De Rosa, and Valentina Auricchio

In the business landscape, there is an increasing recognition of the role that innovation plays in fostering long-term social impact. Demonstrating social value and positive impact is no longer just an internal priority, becoming a key differentiator for companies aiming to obtain funding and legitimacy. Yet, for many small and medium enterprises, proving their social value remains challenging, facing difficulties in assessing their impact on society and in placing value on intangible outcomes and softer values of their initiatives. Many widely accepted impact assessment tools are technical-oriented, resource-intensive, and reliant on specialised expertise, making them often inaccessible to organisations without significant financial investment.
Corporate purpose is not a static concept, being shaped by the structure, values, and objectives of each company. Businesses span a diverse spectrum of profit-driven enterprises, social enterprises, and non-profit organisations, where the understanding of social impact, value and innovation is often fluid and context-dependent. The concept of impact is often framed as internal or external to the organisation, being conceived as the internal benefits provided to employees, fostering a culture of innovation and well-being, or externally, as their engagement with communities through projects that drive social change, either independently or in collaboration with stakeholders.
Exploring how these different...

Connecting the Dots: Harnessing relationships across time and domains towards meaningful health systems transformation

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Navi Boparai, Matthew Hollingshead, and Stephen Canning

Global mental health systems are at an interesting juncture; there is growing awareness and understanding of mental illness; however, there remains significant unmet public needs for care. Alongside this awareness are demands for greater access, improved quality and evidence-based interventions. To address these issues, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has adopted systemic design perspectives to drive towards arcs of impact via its strategic plan. CAMH is Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital and one of the world’s leading research centres in its field, with an additional advocacy agenda to shift attitudes and eliminate stigma around mental health. The history of the field, evolution of patient care and entrenched cultural attitudes all have an impact on relational approaches in the mental health context, where in many cases, system fragmentation is exacerbated by these factors and contributes to how system interventions evolve over time.
This paper explores the progression of strategic plan implementation utilising relationality as an instrument to build health system resilience in both the aspirations for change and in the mechanics of delivering change. Three strategic directions and three drivers form the foundation of a bold strategic plan, including the need to consider mental illness across the lifespan—getting...

Sense-Mapping and the Ongoingness of Relational Systems Change

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Sofía Bosch Gómez and Erica Dorn

In systems change work, the success of design is often measured by its capacity to produce outcomes that are legible to institutions: quantifiable impacts, defined indicators, scalable interventions. This logic of measurement has become not only a tool of accountability but a dominant epistemology that shapes what is valued and replicated. Systems mapping is a core capability within systemic and transition design that tends to reproduce this orientation. While systems mapping tools seek to visualise complexity and involve participation, they also are tethered to paradigms that may inadvertently control and diminish relational and emergent outcomes.
This paper challenges the centrality of measurement and representational fidelity by advancing the practices of sense-mapping and un-measuring as critical capacities for relational systems change. Drawing from feminist, decolonial, and complexity-informed epistemologies, we argue that what most deeply constitutes change (like trust, attunement, co-presence, memory) resists capture. We explore how designers might reorient their practices from outcome-driven abstractions and towards long-term stewardship and epistemic humility where mapping becomes an action of collective sensemaking.
Rather than framing systems as knowable objects to be diagrammed and optimised, we propose that designers cultivate a so-called mapping practice that is situated, slow, and always in motion. Evaluation, in this context, becomes...

Marina Waisman and the Systemic Turn in Architectural Thinking: History, memories, and cybernetics

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Guido Campi

How does history impact design? This was one of the central questions in Marina Waisman’s extensive work. The Argentinian architectural historian and critic is one of the most relevant voices in Latin American architectural thought. From the 1950s to the 1990s, she redefined the history of architecture with new perspectives rooted in Structuralism. In this presentation, I specifically examine the role of systems sciences and cybernetics in two of her most important books.
In The Historical Structure of the Environment (1972), Waisman attempts to reincorporate history, hardly questioned after World War II, into the design process. She engages with systems thinking and proposes a design method not only to understand architectural history but also to enable design practitioners to use it as an active design tool. She argues that a historical structure exists in which environment and knowledge organically intermingle. Design, she explains, occurs as a critical operation within this historical feedback loop: designers extract a design object from it, critically modify it, and feed it back into the system as a new design contextualised in a specific time and place. Waisman urges us to think globally about the whole, in a continuous process where political questions about the fate of...

Grafica Pluralia: Relational scenarios for enhancing the heritage of the Central Institute for Graphics in Rome

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Veneranda Carrino, Aureliano Capri

Report: Drawing methodology to decode a complexity
The article reports on a case study of a didactic experience within a five-day event-based educational event, organised by an Italian academic design institution, which involved a public institution specialised in the protection and valorisation of the tangible and intangible heritage of graphic arts as an educational and project stakeholder. The research carried out concerned the definition of relational scenarios for the fruition of digital cultural heritage and the exploration of new pedagogical approaches based on the education of seeing. In agreement with the constructivist approach to research and didactics in design (Koskinen et al., 2012), the practice-based experience followed a field logic traceable in the organisation of on-site visits and in-depth meetings aimed at facilitating the understanding of the topic in the target students, with a showroom approach to stimulate the definition of scenarios through high-fidelity rapid prototyping techniques. The adoption of representation tools based on topological, geometric and generative models contributed to the articulation of a working brief, which subsequently flowed into a site-specific intervention. Conceptual diagrams such as synoptic frameworks and system maps supported the learning and collaborative experience, stimulating systemic thinking, fostering the analysis of relationships and nodes in the...

ISIARoma: 50 years of systemic design education and design methodology

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Veneranda Carrino

Report: the project for systems and for complexity in the teaching of design ISIA Rome as a distinctive design thought in the Third Mission and Social Change
The presentation aims to clarify the role that a broader vision such as the one intrinsic to systems design (i.e. the design action modelled on systemic thinking and complexity) has favoured and continues to provide to ISIA of Rome (from its foundation as the Advanced Course in Industrial Design and Visual Communication to today as an Afam institution BA and MA in Systemic Design for Services and Products and for Communication, 1965-2005) to emerge in the Third Mission in a distinctive and identifying way in the design approach for Social Change.
The presentation traces the historical legacy of a project teaching that since its beginnings in the academic year 1965-66 declares that Design Education is to be understood as Design that gives Form to Action, or rather operates by activating relationships of involvement, only these can be considered as incisive for the improvement of society or then a transformation of reality towards a collaborative dimension: “Purpose: Participation of the users. Tool: alternative client. Teaching Methodology: design for systems, group, interdisciplinary.” (1977, Pp 20; Van Onck,...

More-than-Human Inclusivity: A multispecies approach to systemic design

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Helen Charoupia, Jenny Darzentas, Tim Bruder, Andrea Conserva, and Chiara Farinea

Inclusive design has traditionally focused on human diversity, accessibility, and equity, while the emerging field of multispecies design foregrounds the perspectives and needs of non-human life. How might we extend inclusive design to incorporate environmental concerns within complex ecological interdependencies? This paper explores this question through a systemic design lens that embraces principles of complexity, variety and resilience. Drawing on systemic design’s legacy of addressing interconnected challenges, as well as the nascent principles of multispecies design, we posit that inclusive design can be expanded beyond social justice to integrate ecological responsibility in practice. We begin by establishing a theoretical foundation, synthesising approaches ranging from ecological and posthumanist thinking to inclusive design principles, providing a conceptual grounding for our proposal. Recognising that design operates within complex socio-ecological systems, where human diversity and biodiversity are not separate, we discuss opportunities for integrating diverse actors’ perceptions, knowledge, insights, and ways of being. We then propose a three-phase framework for extending inclusive design to address planetary concerns. To demonstrate this approach, we present a design intervention of a multisensory vertical garden that employs the proposed methodological guidelines. Our work aims to stimulate further inquiry into evolving design practices that account for human and non-human...

The Interplay of “Can and Should”: A Systemic Categorical Imperative

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Louise Costelloe-Ward

This paper proposes an alternative for describing and categorising leverage points, using concepts from ethical philosophy. I’ll be considering how a reworking of Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative can be used to consider where is best to intervene when faced with a choice of leverage points. This reworking is based around placing more emphasis on the relationship between “can” and “should”, and how these concepts can be combined to resolve challenges around describing and choosing types and methods of leverage.
The first section sets out the relationality between “can” and “should”, and how this can be expressed in systems thinking terms. Rather than assuming we intervene as systemic designers, we often consider where it is better not to, or to deprioritise some interventions in favour of others. This is commonly expressed as “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. I describe how this paper will refer to acting and not acting as a spectrum, rather than a dichotomy, with some examples. I’ll consider how inaction and the more passive end of the action/inaction spectrum have a role in systemic dynamics – the interplay of “can” and “should” already displays itself when designers look at how systemic change happens. This leads to...

Pathways to Planetary Health: Integrating Systems Thinking and Futures Approaches in Engineering Education to Address the Health-Environment Nexus

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Jairo da Costa Junior, Dulaj Perera, and Wouter Eggink

As scholars and professionals expand their understanding of anthropogenic environmental changes threatening human and planetary well-being, they must engage with interconnected social, economic, and environmental issues. This requires acquiring new knowledge and skills to deepen their understanding of the complex and reciprocal relationship between human well-being and the health of the natural systems upon which it relies. Designers and engineers play a critical role as change agents by their capacity to design systemic interventions that drive climate action. Given the ongoing environmental and health crises, it is crucial for them to develop competencies in systems-based, future-oriented, and integrative approaches to health. Nevertheless, the existing literature reflects a limited number of attempts to explore the implementation of such holistic and integrative approaches, aiming at preparing design and engineering students to contribute to pathways toward planetary health futures. A narrative review was conducted on systems thinking, strategic foresight and integrative approaches to planetary health education and practice, with the aim of supporting the development and implementation of a systemic design methodology within engineering education. In addition, critical analyses of pedagogical practices and the student learning process are presented, informed by observations of design activities and outcomes, which reflect on the challenges and...

BioBarnacle: The EcoSystemic urban intervention

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Marie Davidová, María Claudia Valverde Rojas, and Hanane Behnam

This paper reports an ecologically informed co-design intervention within the COLife project, implemented in the biodiversity hotspot of Hoppenlau Cemetery in Stuttgart, adjacent to the University of Stuttgart campus, during winter 2025. Building on prior COLife interventions, we focused on restoring micro-habitats for reptiles—particularly the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis)—alongside bats and insects, through the design, prototyping, and on-site placement of modular “BioBarnacle” units. The work, carried out by a transdisciplinary student team, integrates Systems Oriented Design methods (gigamapping and synthesis mapping), environmental simulations, and full-scale prototyping to enable interaction between human and non-human stakeholders in real-life conditions. Findings indicate that a co-design approach can align ecological insight with spatial intervention at an urban scale, while highlighting requirements for facilitation and long-term monitoring. The contribution will interest planning and design practitioners as well as systemic design education.

Keywords: more-than-human, systems-oriented design, gigamapping, urban biodiversity, urban intervention

RSD14 advance online publications

Bioinspired 3D Fabrication for the Integration of Architecture, Materials, and Construction

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Susannah Dickinson, Federico Peralta Pederson, and Hee-Jeong Kim

This paper disseminates methodologies and findings from an interdisciplinary collaboration between a second-year, core undergraduate architecture digital design communication class and a graduate-level material science engineering class, both at a state university in the southwestern USA. The two related faculty members’ expertise included computational design, biomimetics, complexity, digital fabrication processes and multi-scale chemo-mechanical characterisation of advanced materials. This interdisciplinary connection was seen as a crucial step towards greater environmental sustainability in the built environment, where currently disciplines still remain relatively siloed in their expertise and scales of influence. The collaboration focused on creating environmentally friendly 3D cementitious material systems that incorporated seven different waste by-products and underutilised materials, including copper slag, bone meal and spent coffee grounds. Cementitious mixes were chosen due to their widespread use, while 3D printing allowed for high-level customisation and complex geometries, reducing production time, costs, material usage, and waste as a model for the building construction industry. Mechanical properties across various mixes and geometries were compared to further enhance performance and sustainability.

Keywords: sustainability, material science, design pedagogy, bioinspired design, 3d fabrication

RSD14 advance online publications

Systemic Exploration of Women Associations’ Network Capacity: Case study of the Consulta Femminile of Milan

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Ariele F. Empirio and Margherita Pillan

The commitment and collaboration of associations are driving forces for improving women’s conditions. This paper reports on research that used a systemic design approach to study the Italian NGO league Consulta Femminile di Milano, to support them in their search for strategies that could substantially improve their influence on policymaking by local government institutions. The study analyses the league’s composition, the practices and activities, and the network of external partnerships and collaborations. Systemic design provides the conceptual tools to understand and produce a representation of how this community works.
The study aims to facilitate the discussion within the Consulta about the most promising actions for achieving their goals by raising awareness of opportunities and helping them to identify frictions that could hinder the evolution of their modalities of work and collaboration.
The analysis uses interviews, ethnographic observations, and web scraping to focus on the Consulta’s structure, governance, and external influence. The outcomes reveal the community’s diverse nature, highlight internal and external tensions, and identify leverage points for potential systemic change within the network and its acquisition of greater impact capability. The description provides the starting point for this community to identify actions that could enhance their influence on how women’s issues are...