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 evidence-based examples for the practice field.
KEYWORDS: scaling literacy, systemic co-design, system-shifting design, living lab