In the past decade, through research and continuous practice of innovation, system design has developed into a discipline. This article will introduce a systematic design tool that connects systems thinking, human-centered design, and service design methods to deal with complex system environments, providing designers with the only complete system approach.
This article introduces a systematic design tool, the Systemic Design Toolkit, which provides designers with the only complete system approach to designing more than 30 system modeling canvases for participatory workshops. Validated by dozens of apps, academic training, and workshops, the toolkit connects systems thinking, human-centered design, and service design approaches to address complex systems environments.
First, the service design from the perspective of the system
In the past decade, through research and continuous practice of innovation, system design has developed into a discipline. In service design, we often find challenges to interact with larger systems, often thought of as the optimization and improvement of service infrastructure. When the scale and complexity of service design challenges extend to the “system level,” a user-centric design approach cannot meet the required complexity.
While roles, journeys, and blueprints are well-suited to complex organizational processes and digital services, when organizational challenges overlap with the boundaries of complex systems, including public services, infrastructure, policies, and natural ecosystems, the design of the challenge space shifts from complex to complex. Traditional design practices lack the tools to describe and model viable solutions that are sufficient to cope with high complexity.
More and more designers are being asked to solve transformational challenges where we have little academic or practical training. As creative design firms working on large services or digital platforms, we may show “beginner confidence” when designing for complex organizations or systems.
Most service design projects provide the process of creating products that an organization delivers to customers through service delivery, multiple channels, interactions, and technology systems. System design extends the environment of the design, using a systems approach to engage multiple organizations and stakeholders, enabling service systems to be designed and defined across multiple levels and scales.
We see systems as a highly interconnected mix of societies and technologies that function as a whole – not as delivery processes, but often as services that provide direct value. Unlike services, systems do not have a single “owner” and the responsibilities of customers may not be clear. No one has the climate, transportation, or even the economy. Complex healthcare is beyond the boundaries of hospitals, and a complete system solution can involve multiple providers and transitions.
The System Design Toolkit enables service and strategic designers to facilitate stakeholders to effectively co-create complex systems. The toolkit uniquely solves complex system challenges:
- Provides tools to map the entire system, context, human behavior within the system, and services within the system.
- Enterprise service design requires tools that define relationships with systems to identify the risks and potential of service interactions in related systems.
- System design goes beyond the “user” and is based on knowledge and experience from the inclusive contributions of many system stakeholders.
- These tools help define socio-technical systems that encompass many complex tasks (such as medical practice, where specialized equipment, training, and informatics are tightly integrated). Generic design tools are not sufficient for the expert knowledge needed to develop large-scale socio-technical systems on a continuous, iterative basis.
Some customers and organizations face increasingly complex issues in terms of operations, technology, and service delivery. Organizations, services, and business models become more entangled in their systems environments (e.g., large healthcare providers), and using a “linear” design approach cannot reveal this contradiction and entanglement. If we fail to incorporate these entangled policy and governance perspectives into service design, the potential for systemic change will certainly be limited.
The Systemic Design Toolkit provides a range of tools and perspectives for mapping and coordinating proposals across multiple societal systems, enabling teams to engage more stakeholders as co-designers to represent all service providers.
Second, the difference between service and system logic
We are now facing every functional level and are dealing with higher complexity issues. Organizations face greater complexity (connectivity) in process and service management, and must trust many platforms that are not under their control. Cross-border supplier networks, cloud services, and changing regulatory processes require adaptability. The services we design may reside in increasingly fragile systems and be reinforced by invisible interdependencies and hidden technical complexities.
Service-dominant logic is a key concept in service design, i.e. the customer is seen as a co-producer of value realization in service delivery. When the customer is satisfied, the value delivered by the enterprise is recognized, and the customer is the real end point in the value chain.
In the logic of the system, the customer and the supplier are not only participants in providing services and interactions, but they also actively connect with other stakeholders to form an inclusive process. Value transfer is the result of multiple system interactions and feedback. We can plan and design for that value, but its realization is a collective process over time.
If we adopt a user-centric design to enhance the service experience in complex systems, we have the potential to reduce the efficiency of the entire system. Considering a small-scale example, we may improve the “waiting room experience” in a medical office, but we will not be able to reduce the waiting time caused by delays in the scheduling process and hospital systems. More broadly, delays in scheduling life-threatening cancer surgeries can occur due to scheduling priorities set at the policy level.
In this case, if we can’t address the root cause, we can only improve the local experience for patients. In addition, by not challenging the root cause, we can avoid the root cause in the long term.
We often provide services to our clients or their service delivery platform design services, but the system does not have a single owner and sometimes crosses conflicting stakeholders. The methods, models, and conversations that produce effective service recommendations may not extend to complex systems. They are not only differences in scale, but also differences in type, knowledge, model, participant, and governance.
Because system-level decisions can have a corresponding impact on all services in the underlying management mix, the design requires access to the entire system and participants beyond the boundaries of one service. While service business models provide value returns through revenue, systems such as global health, national health care, or immigration policies must co-create shared value among many owners, actors, platforms, and even governments.
The service design of policy platforms is often located in existing infrastructure and socio-technical systems (STS). STS are interconnected workflows in which technologies are integrated to enable well-codified processes, such as drug delivery networks (in the global health sector) or electronic health records (in the field of national healthcare). Hospitals can be thought of as complex tissues of multi-scale STS.
Third, systematic design expands the service boundary
When does a service item enter a system level? A service is a bounded process that is usually contained in a larger system. The service business model of a single healthcare provider cannot change the systems that govern all medical services (such as payers or insurance systems). Service design can leverage system tools to build system models that provide arguments for more efficient generic features to serve the stakeholders in the service and include systems.
All design methods can be used to define this relationship between services and system values. We see the relationships between interactions, services, and system design, as shown in Figure 1, where each specific function is interrelated. Interaction design is an in-depth, evidence-based practice that is necessary to define the experiences that emerge in user interactions, information usage, and service touchpoints. It is not a design phase, but runs through all service processes.
Figure 1. Systemic design extends service design to the system
In general, service design develops integrated solutions for providers to co-create extraordinary service experiences while hiding complex background interactions. The system design does not repeat these or make the methods redundant. Its specific purpose is to create system value for policies and multi-organizational systems, driven by stakeholder-driven design decisions.
Figure 1 shows several distinguishing features of the system design. These are system functions that match the practices in the toolkit, dealing with system definition (framework, modeling), stakeholder discovery in a multi-organizational environment, design interventions for system changes, and system value propositions.
Fourth, the system design toolkit
System design as a field has evolved over a decade without any standard methodological specification. The System Design Toolkit is a tool platform chosen from a consensus approach recognized by the theory and practice of system design.
Belgian design firm Namahn led the design of the toolkit (following their successful service design toolkit). Namahn and design partner shiftN tested the original tool at a workshop at the RSD5 Symposium (Toronto, 2016). A partnership was established with the MaRS Solutions Lab and the System Design Association in Toronto to launch and sustain the toolkit.
Through education and customer practice, the toolkit has evolved into a systems approach that explicitly connects services as interventions in complex systems.
The toolkit is the only publicly available source of reference methodologies in system design, as well as support and training. Rather than representing a definite methodology, we think of the toolkit as an evolving process model developed using a variety of systems approaches.
Through a seven-step approach (see Figure 2), the toolkit provides design-led teams with a system for engaging stakeholders in the framework and vision, mapping trends and system dynamics, defining values and interventions, and planning transition strategies. The maps drawn serve as inputs to the final form of visual effects for client and stakeholder teams to design plans to co-create value across services and systems.
Figure 2. Systemic Design Toolkit methodology (systemicdesigntoolkit.org)
Fifth, the design method of the system
These seven steps integrate systems and design approaches, alternating between systems thinking (top step) and design thinking (bottom step). The key methods associated with each step show the breadth and methodology of the toolkit:
- Build the system: boundaries, context, and participant/stakeholder mapping
- Listening Systems: Metaphor, Design Research
- Understand the system: system mapping, feedback loop, comprehensive mapping
- Defining the ideal future: value propositions, vision models
- Exploring the Space of Possibilities: Intervention Strategies, Paradoxes
- Design intervention models: intervention, organization
- Driving Transformation: A Transformation Strategy
While most Toolkit methods are directly informed by classical system references, we have innovated some as practical experiments (such as metaphors and paradoxes). The Toolkit approach is flexible. In our experience, no project uses all the tools, and in a workshop, the steps can be arranged as a phased meeting. Depending on the project phase, as well as the scope of the design, time, and availability of knowledge, these tools may be adapted to the project to facilitate design beyond the project definition phase.
Systematic design tools are ultimately empowered in the context of complex systems and solve complex system problems, you can get the system design tool template by viewing the official website related to system design tools, which can be learned and learned.
