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 a relational inquiry that traces processes and possibilities. This paper contributes a conceptual distinction between mapping as representational capture and sense-mapping as collective sensemaking, alongside two practical frameworks that reposition mapping as a relational, multi-sensory, and ongoing design practice.
Keywords: relational systems change, plural epistemologies, collective sensemaking