Welcome to the Design Loft.
Today, we’re looking at elevating your impact by the power(s) of ten. We’re going to look at two combined design approaches that employ systems thinking. These techniques will help you see systems around you, scale and scope your design strategies, and create products, services and actions that are suitable for whatever system you’re in.
Let’s start with a story about how I got into systems and the film (and person) that started it all.
My Systems Thinking Origin Story
I owe much of my career to one person and the video he showed on the first day of my first psychology class. The person was Dr. Paul Antrobus, and the film was the Powers of Ten, by Charles and Ray Eames. The film, produced in 1977, begins with a couple on a picnic blanket in a park in Chicago, then zooms out and then inward to reveal the contexts around and within them, highlighting each factor of ten. This reveals the neighbourhood, city, country, planet, and various systems in space, and then zooms in to the skin, cells, blood, molecules, electrons, and subatomic particles that make up the human body.
After showing the 10-minute film at the start of class, Dr. Antrobus said, “This is the domain of psychology, let’s begin.” My mind was blown, never to return to its original state. It’s guided my work and life ever since.
Zoom In, Zoom Out
I’m still a fan of the original 1977 film; its message is no less true today than it was back then. There are others like it, each illustrating a technique designers call Zoom Out/Zoom In. This technique uses perspective-taking to help us see a situation from different vantage points. This might mean using empathetic reasoning to imagine what it is like to experience something through the eyes and life of someone else (a patient, a practitioner, a caregiver). It also allows us to see practices, interactions, settings, or contexts differently by zooming in on them or out.
A healthcare centre is different when you look at it as an institution, or as a division, or as a clinic, a laboratory, or as an encounter in a waiting or examination room. All of these are legitimate perspectives, yet the utility of each perspective depends on the design jobs at hand.
Likewise, we can zoom in or out of time by looking at a day (see our Day in the Life Lesson), a week, a year, or a four or five-year time horizon.
If I’m developing a strategic plan with an organization, a longer time horizon and an organization-level perspective are more useful than focusing on daily operations in a specific part of the organization. We probably need to zoom out.
Likewise, a patient's experience matters greatly in their journey, which can depend on needs, condition severity, and the availability of treatment or support options. We might need to zoom in a little more.
Boundary Setting
This is where we get into systems thinking. The Powers of Ten film, through its zoom-in/zoom-out approach, also demarcates boundaries using measurement. In doing so, we see boundaries defined as a picnic blanket, a park, a planet, a patch of skin, or a cell. Within each of these boundaries lies a system.
A system is a bounded set of relationships and interactions that have a purpose. By purpose, it means we ascribe one to it. So if we bound the picnic blanket, we might look at the people (the couple), the food and drink, the books, and how the blanket demarcates a space where the couple can interact and enjoy their afternoon in the park. Boundaries avoid us having to account for everything, and to allow us to focus on what is within (or excluded) from the boundaries we set.
Boundary setting is a social activity and is often used as part of a participatory approach to design. There are few formal rules for setting a boundary; it is something negotiated. The right boundary is the one that allows you to make sense of something and see the scale and scope of the issue in a manageable form. The ultimate goal is to create the right frame so that you can create something meaningful.
A guide is this: if you’re constantly looking beyond your boundary for answers, you’ve set it too tight. If you’re lost and don’t know where to start or how to make sense of everything you’re seeing, then you’ve probably bound things too loosely; zoom in a little more.
Practice Notes
The Zoom-In/Zoom-Out approach with boundary-setting is a useful way to see systems and generate ideas. It’s also a way to focus your attention as a strategic tool. By simply asking questions about positions and frames, and then negotiating and setting boundaries, you can learn to see things differently and provide you with systems-aware strategies to address what you see (and what you don’t)
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Photos: M. R. on Unsplash Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash, Roger (via Flickr) all used under license.