Resources: Systems thinking for designers

It’s good to see more growing interest around systems thinking amongst designers, evidenced by this year’s Interaction21 conference and recent conversations I’ve had with other designers. Granted, this year’s conference theme, “Design in Perilous Times”, probably attracts more people with these interests.

This continues to build on previous years’ conferences, e.g. Leyla Acaroglu’s keynote & workshop and Valerie Pegon and Gauthier Fanmuy’s talk at Interaction18, Sabrina Tarquini’s workshop at Interaction20 and Johanna Kollmann’s workshop at Interaction16.

In support of this trend, I’ve pulled together a collection of readings and resources around systems thinking specifically produced by designers or for designers, as part of my ongoing desire to support the conversation and learn from others.

I will continue to expand this list as I come across more relevant resources at the intersection of systems thinking and design — do get in touch if you have a recommendation to add.

A specific centre of gravity to this discourse is Systemic Design (Wikipedia), blending human-centred design and systems thinking, broadening and blending the scope of these practices in much greater depth, led by communities like the International Society of Systemic Design and referenced by systems thinking communities like Systems Community of Inquiry.

This article primarily references systems thinking methods, perspectives and foundations aimed specifically at designers, rather than Systemic Design as a whole.

If you’re short on time, you can scroll past the introduction to access the resources directly.

At Interaction21 this year, “systems thinking”, “systemic design” and other “systems” references surfaced heavily again, particularly through talks by ariel muller, Aza Raskin, erin malone, and Allison Bouganim.

I was particularly surprised by the large number of attendees who listed “systems thinking”, “holistic design”, “ecosystem mapping”, “systems mapping” as their interests on their profiles on the daily Miro boards. About a quarter of attendees who filled out their profiles on the Miro board had the word “systems” or “ecosystem” or “holistic” in them, after I excluded ones that listed “design systems” which is not quite the same thing.

If this was me 5 years ago looking out beyond 2020, I would have believed IoT, AR/VR, voice, smart…