Cat Drew, Cassie Robinson, and Jennie Winhall
Design Council & The Point People UK | The National Lottery Community Fund | ALT/NOW
As the scale, complexity and interdependence of societal challenges are more recognised, the need for systemic approaches to change has grown, and design and systems thinking becomes ever more entwined. The RSD conference has led discussions about the integration of these practices, with papers putting forward frameworks and principles that combine the two.
But what if it’s not as simple as just putting the two together? Previous discussion has highlighted the shortcomings of systems thinking (e.g. preponderance of analysis over action) and design (e.g. limitations of rapid prototyping in complex systems where feedback is slow). But equally, the role of design has not been used to its full potential.
We are currently hosting a discussion series with leading designers in the UK on what a next generation of creative systemic design practice could look like that goes beyond combining current design approaches with systems thinking—and how design itself needs to evolve—to make a greater contribution to meeting these systemic societal challenges. This abstract contains emerging thoughts, with the final submission crystallising these.
The social innovation field has widely adopted design. However, when it comes to systems, the role of design is, in practice, largely limited to, firstly, mapping and understanding systems using visual tools and, secondly, designing incremental improvements within the terms of current systems. This reflects a bias towards the analytical and processual that we think has become endemic in parts of the design field and social change more generally. Design has a greater role to play in strengthening the creative leadership required to reimagine and remake systems. We need more designers contributing their skills to big systemic challenges and more non-designers valuing the act of creation—but design itself needs to be stretched to fulfil this potential. This paper contributes to conference themes around the methodology for systemic design and also—through its focus on design practitioners, on systemic design (not just thinking) for creating systems for contentment and sustainability.
