Luis Marines and Lucía Avila
The emergence of global policies and restrictions throughout the pandemic has only maximised the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment we live in and that we have experienced for decades; accelerating at the same time processes of cultural transformation and reinforcing the inequality gaps that have characterised developing countries, markedly conducted by neoliberal public policies.
Due to the multiplicity of critical scenarios that we face nowadays, it is essential for designers to accelerate the way we adopt and adapt thinking models and frameworks that allow us to visualise the interdependencies, causalities, and purposes presented within complex systems, to ideate potential interventions that enable systems-level changes.
The Systemic Experience Canvas is a tool that helps to visualise the quality of interactions between a system and the experience of its stakeholders. During this workshop, participants use the Systemic Experience (SX) Canvas, a generative tool based on the soft systems methodology and designed to constantly ‘zoom in & zoom out’ of a wicked problem alternating both user and system-centric perspectives to understand an issue. This workshop aims to offer practitioners an alternative method to easily integrate both macroscopic and microscopic perspectives into their projects. By using a framework that allows diverse stakeholders to discuss and confront their perception about a system and its embedded experiences, the SX Canvas represents an approachable option to generate system & user-centred visions and conversations while working with complex issues.
Keywords: strategic design, generative tools, systems mapping, causal loops
