Design, from holistic to systemic
Make the link between the different Design methodological approaches, as this is the first tool of any interaction designer.
This note is the first in a series entitled Entre-espace.
How: Understand the structure of these methodologies and their purpose. How to create a method, a procedure and a canvas.
For whom: Designers and anyone who wants to explore design and innovation.
If every human being is a designer, the designer is a profession that helps give “form and order to the arrangements of life”.
Design is not just polysemous, it’s polymorphous. It has dozens of definitions. It can be user-centered, holistic, industrial, interdisciplinary, problem-solving, creative, measurable…
In the end, each definition says more about its author’s design practice than about Design itself.
Here, I’m talking about interaction design* and, above all, its field of vision and action. In French, it’s once again a polysemous word that defines it best: l’objectif (I’ll use the word for its two meanings.). L’objectif is the goal, but it is also, in optics, the focal point. It can be macro or micro.
* the action or influence of people, groups, or things on one another.
The components
Three components are recurrent when we talk about Design as a field of conception:
- the process
- the concretization (of the project)
- l’objectif
The process
It’s always the same, whatever the number of stages and nominations you put on it. It ends up being close to this idea:
- We map and walk through the project context
- We Define the objective and its measures
- We Prototype and test the project
- We Implement the project by documenting, continuously improving and monitoring it.
If the process is the same, it’s the methods and tools that will vary.
You can’t go from product design to systems design without acquiring knowledge.
On the other hand, the more we understand how a methodology is structured around our process, the more we can move from one type of design to another. This is what I’m going to explore in the next notes of this series.
+ The Differences Between Design Frameworks (Debbie Lewitt)
The concretization
This concretization can be tangible (a product) or intangible (a service process).
The designer has the ability to move from the abstract to the concrete and practical. This is one of the ways in which design differs from other more theoretical approaches. If it is poorly explained, it can be considered too theoretical or too abstract. If it is understood, it becomes the bridge between strategy and operations.
This brings us to the fourth component of Design: the collective.
Corporate culture, interdisciplinarity and co-creation all depend on this component. I’ll come back to it regularly, but this note will focus on l’objectif.
L’objectif
We’re at a point of equilibrium where some of us are looking for meaning, while others are focused on the need for growth.
“But the context is stronger than the concept”
Mc Solaar
Contextual Design
UX Design and Product Design have very product-focused objectives.
Most of the time, we map the information that will transform this product into evidence, abandoning the rest of the information that doesn’t correspond to the order (improving the payment tunnel, for example).
This framework and the silos between teams, domains and even functions often exclude holistic work from the context.
The context most familiar to UX designers is the user context, or user background.
A designer should take several components into account in order to manage the context of a project:
- Market maturity
In addition to defining the user, we also consider the market in terms of competition (blue ocean versus red ocean). - Technological maturity
It is a key factor in ensuring product feasibility. Our consumer system, driven by programmed obsolescence, is in an almost continuous cycle of renewal. This implies rapidly reaching market arrival, if not product market fit, and is therefore linked to organizational maturity. - Organizational maturity
Organizational maturity rarely appears in project diagrams. Yet understanding the maturity of the organization we work for is important. Knowing how to make a product discovery won’t be enough if this organization has no business plan, no knowledge of its legal obligations, no understanding of design, … - What is Digital Maturity, How to Measure, Tools & Models (Stefan F.Dieffenbacher)
+ The State of UX Maturity: Data from Our Self-Assessment Quiz (Kate Moran)
+ How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product Market Fit (Rahul Vora)
Holistic Design
Service design is a holistic approach that focuses on the design of complete services, taking into account all points of contact with the user.
[…] holistic design is an approach to design that takes a bird’s eye view of the entire user experience and attempts to make it as smooth and enjoyable as possible. In doing so, not only will people buy and use the products, but they’re more likely to be repeat customers.
Big Human
Broader objectif…
The difference between contextual design and holistic design is the scope of research and action. Here, I take up the basis given by Charles Eames, which I find much broader than that given by design thinking.
- client
In the broadest sense of the term, this includes users, collaborators, but also prospects and potential customers.
People 2 customer: we’re going to take into account not only the entire customer experience, but also the entire user lifecycle.
Example: we’re no longer just working on the functionality of ordering a product in-store, we’re also taking into account the rest of the experience by improving checkout waiting time through the installation of lockers accessible by unique code. - society
Apart from the legal aspect, organizations tend to bypass societal issues such as ecology, accessibility and respect for human rights. The current multi-crisis situation will make this business-as-usual mentality increasingly difficult, as new regulations come into being (reparability index, nutri-score, AI act, etc.).
+ Right to repair (European Commission) - office
Technology can be an important lever, but it’s not always necessary. With its ability to test thousands of combinations, AI may help us find new materials that will enable production that respects our planet (human included), but a return to measured gestures and common sense can help us just as much.
Take urban planning, for example: who hasn’t grumbled when discovering yet another construction site on a lane that failed to take into account the other problems associated with that lane (speed, bus lane, fiber, electricity, drainage, etc.)? Synchronization is not a question of tools, it’s first and foremost a question of way of thinking, training, objectives…
+ The rise of the dumb city (Liam Murphy)
It’s also the office that “officially” builds bricks to increase the organization’s maturity.
…broader fields of responsibility
Holistic thinking has accustomed users to frictionless experiences, but it has also (finally) allowed ethical issues to emerge publicly.
In particular, LLMs (Large Language Models) have led to the emergence of new guidelines akin to deontological rules. New professions are also emerging: AI Ethic Officer, Sustainability manager, Harrassment Referent, etc.
+ Guidance: the use of Artificial Intelligence (BBC)
Systemic Design
Systemic thinking takes into account the whole of a system, rather than individual components. Systems thinking is a natural approach to today’s complex problems.
Systemic design is one such approach, changing the designer’s objective by asking him to integrate Systems Thinking into his “toolbox”.
It’s worth noting that these problems are systemic disturbances that man has caused by acting without taking his environment into account.
[…] an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organised in a way that achieves something
Donella Meadow
Used with an objective eye, the Design systemic brings reason to a painful question: why?
Like most parents, I explain to my son that actions have consequences, and that these consequences are not always direct and immediate: he must be careful with his water consumption, he must treat others as he would like to be treated, he must brush his teeth …
Why, as an adult, have I strayed from my own advice?
If you want to know more about Systemic Design, I suggest you start by watching the video series Sustainable Systems (Donella Meadows). You’ll literally hear that famous why.
For those who want to know more you can watch the Interactive Design Timeline, a “Systemic” filter is present on the table.
Systems thinking is the only way to liberate objectification and ethics, and any design that wants to be ethical and objective must aim for this path. I’ll demonstrate these approaches in the following note: Yuka example, from holistic to systemic.
And if you don’t know how to start, ask questions ;-)
