INQUIRY BASED SYSTEMIC DESIGN.
Carl Collins, the Old Grey Bear and I co-wrote this essay in the same time last year and it has ever since been dormant in my Google Docs. It is time it sees the light of day.
Part 1: The design of systems as services and alternative methods of approach
“A common obstacle to understanding is our habit of asking for a specific product we have used or seen rather than analyzing our need.” — Richard Saul Wurman
Inquiry Based Systemic Design is a fancy way to say, “let’s start with questions and keep asking them until we find the right problems to solve.”
In classic problem-solving and consulting, it is tempting to apply a formulaic or ready-made solutions based on previous experience and expertise alone. However alone will enable the right solutions, inquiry into both the behavioral symptoms and the larger root causes is necessary.
Instead of addressing the symptoms and, instead of quickly moving to a solution, or, we rely on inquiry and represent behavior to visualize alternatives that might not have been considered.
(1) Attacking the cause of the problem. (2) Analyzing, implementing and continued guidance around execution.
An ordered list is incomplete without a sense of magnitude. Knowing the scales of a project — knowing why the project is being done and who it benefits — these are the most basic and important questions when approaching any organizational design.
INVESTIGATING
THE ART OF ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
Every question is specific to what we hope to learn. In forming a line of inquiry, we seek to not rely on givens. We want to move away from things being done “just because” and see how certain awkward fragilities might be subtracted from the systems we work on.
Where is this problem situated in your system?
What/Who does this problem affect?
What/Who affects this problem?
What are the issues generated?
What are the immediate/long-term goals that need to be met?
Are there existing documentation about this problem?
What is it’s trajectory?
When was this first exposed?
Are there data sets attached to this problem?
Is this a recurrent problem?
The inquiry based systemic design exposes findings and documents each interview first in raw formats, then analyzed and organized so that the results start shaping into stories.
Design is about cultural invention, not problem solving. We will solve problems along the way, however Design creates new ways of doing things.
EXPRESSING THE UNTHINKABLE
ENVISIONING INFORMATION
A powerful new way of representing a complex system and finding a new way of thinking about it — a way of using representations to think powerfully about systems. The new way of thinking is facilitated by the representation of what the system is doing. If the system is doing something but we can’t see it, how can we fully understand it?
The same way writing made thought visible, representing the system in it’s full complexity will allow is to:
See the entire behavior of a system:
- Interact with the system
- See different perspectives of the system
- Interact with the different behaviours of the system
In order to be able to affect the system properly, draw accurate theories or create a new system, we need to have a complete understanding of the complexe system, facilitated by visual thinking.
A variety of methods are at our fingertips and used simultaneously as a way to adapt the information to our sense: allowing us to think the unthinkable.
Information architecture Principles:
- Categorization of information into a coherent structure
- Highlight distinction of signs and system of signs
- Organization of structure (Hierachical, concentric, chaotic)
- Heuristic evaluation
- Content audit
- Micro / Macro readings
Goals:
- Quick understanding of the situations and the issues involved
- Visual explanation documented of initial systems
- Archives of visual explanations
- Evaluation of progress and change
Interactive Data Visualization Principles:
- Represent the behaviour of a system
- Interact with the different behaviours of the system
- Drawing a dynamic picture and explorable explanations
- Building associations in our mind
Once a system is properly revealed, demystified, explained and understood, it can be changed and improves. The use of visual explanations has always facilitated smart decision making — whether it’s finding your way out; or discovery the cure to a virus. A structure that is made visible helps the mind think explicitly and develop means of manipulating it. Taking the behaviours and transform them, thus creating new relationships of abstracting family of systems and finding new ways of existing.
Part 2: Drawing Physical Models & Testing Them
COLLABORATING
WORKSHOPS & QUICK PROTOTYPING
With a guerrilla anthropology approach, the Inquiry Based Systemic Design methodology defends the need to be directly connected to the community affected by a broken system.
Collaborative human-centered methodologies draw great results through the practice of workshops and training. The goal of these workshops are to highlighting the goals that need to be achieved, validating the priority and quick prototyping and testing of new ideas leading to a clear set of requirements.
Designing for change tests and implements new ideas within the company culture, its ecosystem and in a given system or within a internal organizational process.
The workshops are structured as follow:
Workshop Program:
THINK / MAKE / TEST
Listening Session
Voicing Goals & Validating them
Scenario & Storytelling
Brainstorming
Prototyping & Iteration
Scenarios and stories describe behaviours. The Behaviour-driven development (BDD) takes the position that you can turn an idea for a requirement into implemented, tested, production-ready code simply and effectively, as long as the requirement is specific enough that everyone knows what’s going on.
To do this, we need a way to describe the requirements (during phase 2 of the workshop: Voicing Goals & Validation) such that everyone — the business folks, the analyst, the developer and the tester — have a common understanding of the scope of the work. From this they can agree a common definition of “done”, and we escape the dual gumption traps of “that’s not what I asked for” or “I forgot to tell you about this other thing”. http://dannorth.net/whats-in-a-story/
Scenarios & Stories:
Title (one line describing the story)
Narrative:
As a [role]
I want [feature]
So that [benefit]
Acceptance Criteria: (presented as Scenarios)
Scenario 1: Title
Given [context]
And [some more context]…
When [event]
Then [outcome]
And [another outcome]…
“As a [role] I want [feature] so that [benefit].”
Thinking of a new way of formulating an [issue] so that the [goal] benefits [someone or a group].
The workshops focus on the question “Who does this benefit?”
Part 3: Design is Not About Solving Problems
DESIGN IS ABOUT CULTURAL INVENTION
DESIGN FICTION & PROTOTYPING
Inventing a new culture. Changing existing (bad) behaviour into the new ones, training and implementing culture change not by designing a new chair to sit on, but by designing a whole new invisible structure to rely on and grow. Invisible architectures.
Environments.
Communities.
Culture.
How can we design these things?
By putting a thought into action. The art of executing the plan and adapting quickly along the way.
Talking about Design, is like dancing about Architecture. It is the act of creating new paradigms and structures not only solving existing problems, or mere solutions for existing issues — rather as an experiment or prototype of possible futures.
