MIND THE GAP: THE OUTCOME MAP AS A BRIDGE FROM SYSTEMIC SENSEMAKING TO PSS DESIGN IN A CASE STUDY ABOUT CHILDREN WITH INCARCERATED PARENTS (original) (raw)

Design Research Methods in Systemic Design

In Proceedings of RSD3, Third Symposium of Relating Systems Thinking to Design., 2014

Systemic design is distinguished from user-oriented and service design practices in several key respects: The expansion and negotiation of system boundaries to frame the design situation, the intentional embrace of sociotechnical complexity, and strategies of systemic integration rather than market differentiation. Systemic design is concerned with higher-order socially-organized systems that encompass multiple subsystems in policy, organizational or product-service contexts. By integrating systems thinking and its methods, systemic design brings human-centered design to complex, multi-stakeholder service systems as those found in industrial networks, transportation, medicine and healthcare. It adapts from known design competencies - form and process reasoning, social and generative research methods, and sketching and visualization practices - to describe, map, propose and reconfigure complex services and systems.

See the unseen: a co-creation design process for children with incarcerated parents

Cumulus conference - CONNECTIVITY and CREATIVITY in times of CONFLICT, 2023

Children are the future, but we often ignore their opinions and ideas with the excuse that they are too young to understand the world. Especially in the process of caretaking, adults often disregard the importance of the child's agency. This is even more the case for children with an incarcerated parent, who innocently carry the consequences of their parent's crime. As a result, children of incarcerated parents feel powerless; they are stuck in a situation created by adults and have no control over their future perspectives. If designers successfully want to design for children with incarcerated parents, they need to collaborate with them. This paper describes the importance of and the methods for involving vulnerable children in the design process. As part of an 8-month lasting master thesis project, methods are explored for co-creation with children. During this process, children took on the role of design partners, they were the experts of their experiences while the designer was the facilitator. Co-creation with children was essential for a successful design process, yet this came with a variety of challenges and risks. Co-creation removed the powerlessness of children of prisoners by giving them control over the design process through consultation and participation. By providing information, input, artifacts, methods, and tools the involved children were able to understand and place questions and assignments better, it took away their uncertainty, misunderstanding, and confusion. Further, as a designer, it was necessary to call on the expertise of child therapists and caregivers, who can prepare designers for dialogue with vulnerable children.

Using Design Thinking to Break Social Barriers: an Experience Report with Former Inmates

Context and motivation: Design Thinking techniques have been widely used in the elicitation of software requirements, since such methods obtain satisfying results when applied to understand the necessities of both stakeholders and end-users. However, there is a lack of evidence on their effectiveness when applied to populations considered vulnerable. Question/problem: What are the implications of using Design Thinking techniques to elicit requirements in a community of former inmates - and what would be the benefits of and challenges in this deployment? Principal ideas/results: In this paper, we report our experience on using Design Thinking for Requirements Elicitation of a mobile application, customized for a vulnerable population: the former inmates of the Brazilian Prison System and their families. Research approach and methodology: We utilized the d.school Design Thinking method during our research. Techniques such as Brainstorming, Stakeholder Mapping, Personas Creation, Rapid...

Beyond service design: understanding complex challenges on a systemic level

Conference Proceedings , 2023

Traditional user-centred design methodologies are no longer adequate for addressing the new way of thinking required by today's global challenges, considering the systemic complexity that service design has now reached. This paper addresses how a systemic approach can support service design practices to understand, map and represent complex challenges such as rural fires. The research methods include a systemic design approach that provides an in-depth view of the system and the institutional structure by identifying the actors and their relationships and unpacking the current issues. Moreover, this paper identifies intervention areas and suggests recommendations: more involvement and collaboration between the different actors and the fire prevention system can prevent and mitigate the risks of rural fires more efficiently. The study indicates that service design can benefit from a systemic approach by investigating the actors, roles, and interdependencies and identifying challenges and strategic intervention areas in complex systems.

A Framework for Systemic Design

FormAkademisk - forskningstidsskrift for design og designdidaktikk, 2014

As designers move upstream from traditional product and service design to engage with challenges characterised by complexity, uniqueness, value conflict, and ambiguity over objectives, they have increasingly integrated systems approaches into their practice. This synthesis of systems thinking with design thinking is forming a distinct new field of systemic design. This paper presents a framework for systemic design as a mindset, methodology, and set of methods that together enable teams to learn, innovate, and adapt to a complex and dynamic environment. We suggest that a systemic design mindset is inquiring, open, integrative, collaborative, and centred. We propose a systemic design methodology composed of six main activities: framing, formulating, generating, reflecting, inquiring, and facilitating. We view systemic design methods as a flexible and open-ended set of procedures for facilitating group collaboration that are both systemic and designerly.

The what, how and who of social service design

Services are an important type of intervention used to address complex societal problems such as chronic health problems and climate change. Social services are defined as services that have a social purpose, and are based on high-quality social interactions between service deliverer and service consumer. This paper shows through three case studies what we are designing, how we design, and who designs when designing social services. The case studies show that while some are focused on the interface between service deliverer and consumer, an important type of intervention is a 'social infrastructure', which is a structured way of bringing service deliverers together to incrementally redesign their own service. Practices that support the design of social services include: developing a deep understanding of the needs of both service consumers and service deliverers, using design expertise to frame complex problems, and playing an active role in prototyping and implementing the intervention.

A Designerly-Way of Conducting Qualitative Research in Design Studies

Design studies focuses on explaining the human activity of design, and is fundamental to design research. It frequently involves the use of qualitative research approaches such as case study, with the collection of a considerable amount of heterogeneous data (e.g. observations, interviews, documents, artifacts). Multiple sources and heterogeneous data can be hard to analyse. Within social sciences, qualitative analysis is undertaken through the process of coding (e.g. grounded theory) which can be supported by computer-assisted software such as Nvivo. However, this type of analysis works better for textual data and is not so effective to analyze more heterogeous and visual data sets. Moreover, the process of open, selective and axial coding in traditional qualitative research do not have a good fit with the more visual, iterative, and participatory approaches of service design researchers. To address these challenges this article presents a case study research, where a more visual and participatory designerly approach was used to conduct qualitative research in design studies. The results show that the approach enabled a richer data triangulation and analysis; and also triggered more multidisciplinary discussions, enriching study's results.

Overlapping research and design phases through participatory strategies

2016

This paper explores the implications, with regard to service design education, of a project in the second semester of the Service Systems Design Master’s program at Aalborg University. The learning objective of this project is to develop student capabilities in the design and deployment of service concepts within a systemic environment. Topics introduced as part of the program’s curriculum in this semester that contribute to engaging students in this type of thinking include both technical (production systems, IT systems) and social (user participation and social innovation) aspects. As the case study is discussed, note will be taken of the influence of this educational approach in the design team’s choices throughout the project process. Through this exploration, a discussion can be held on the opportunities and challenges presented to students as they attempt to combine the various aspects of a design education focused on systemic thinking.