Pranay Arun Kumar and Peter Jones
Health Systems Studio, OCAD University | OCAD University, Toronto, Canada
We report on systemic design methods and outcomes from a workshop and continuing design development for a research agenda to propose effective waste and environmental strategies in the healthcare industry. The recent interest in systems and expansion of systemic design research has produced new avenues for designers to contribute to complex sociotechnical problems in designerly ways. We posit an approach called developmental design, as in developmental evaluation, satisfying the requirements when a longer-term, high-impact design goal is necessary, and typical design outcomes cannot be produced within a normal schedule of design products, as in many strategic design contexts. Developmental design is pursued through learning iterations following an ongoing series of design and evaluation interventions. The goal of the current study was to contribute to managing design for critical sustainability issues within the complexity of healthcare as an industry. Three phases of design research are discussed in this programme. First, a virtual design workshop produced a problematic from the contributions of mixed-expertise designers, using a selected set of tools from the systemic design toolkit. Analysis and design interventions were developed by the authors. A current phase of the study is developing a synthesis map, translating research to a design artefact which projects the complexity of a wicked problem rather than distilling complexities to distinct action points. Thus, the artefact—the synthesis map—serves as a frame of reference for the third phase of research, which is research on targeted interventions which are contextually and temporally relevant to stakeholders in sustainable healthcare policy.
KEYWORDS: developmental design, sociotechnical systems, healthcare, sustainability
