Systems Approach to Design
Institute: National Institute of Design, Bengaluru
Discipline: Interaction Design (Batch 2019–21)
The Master in Design batch of Interaction Design (2019–21) has 14 students. The class comes from different educational backgrounds and holds a variety of work experiences. It is a mixed bag of engineers, designers, architects, and science students.
Faculty guides: Mrs. Mamata Rao, Mrs. Jagriti Galphade
Course: Systems Approach to Design
Pre-read: Students were initially asked to read about the Ice-berg model of thinking in terms of systems. The Iceberg model is a system thinking tool that takes iceberg as an analogy to help discover the patterns of behavior, supporting structures, and mental models that result in an event.
Collections Vs. Systems
The session started with questions like what is a system and how would you determine whether something is a system or not? The goal here was to understand what a system is and thinking in terms of it. The discussion was in reference to a document named “Introduction to Systems Thinking” written by Daniel H. Kim.
As the discussion started, people started throwing in terms and actions that were part of systems or systems themselves. The words went from as broad as education to a pencil box. It reached a point where it was hard to determine which was a system and which was just a set of elements.
Kim, in his document, explains the difference between collections and systems. What sets them apart and how sometimes they change with time and perception.
A collection, according to him, is a set of elements that do not interact with each other and are unrelated. They may share the same space and come under a said category but the removal of one element doesn't need to affect the other.
To explain this he takes the example of a kitchen and a fruit bowl.
Let’s take the example of a kitchen along with its elements. A kitchen is a space full of elements like utensils, a tap, a refrigerator, etc. but none of these things interact or interrelate in an interdependent way. So this inevitably is a collection.
To this, the students strongly react having never seen a kitchen that is not interdependent. Every element in a kitchen is placed in a specific place for a specific reason, it is all related and connected through the actions the human performs.
But this is true for all collections, with human intervention almost any collection turns into a system, without that it is a collection.
Another example of a system is the fruit bowl. If people were to categorize a fruit bowl, it would most commonly be thought of as a collection, but on further thought, it is indeed a system. The fruits in a bowl are kept together taking into account multiple qualities of the fruits and how they react to an adjacent fruit in the same bowl.
“…system is any group of interacting, interrelated or interdependent parts that form a complex unified whole that has a specific purpose.”
The key features that elevate a system from a mere collection of elements are the ability to interact with it through some interfaces integrated within and the each and every parts whether interrelated or independent being able to form a unified complex structure and above all having a specific purpose to fulfill as a whole.
Having understood this, the class moves on to discuss how systems can be analyzed on the basis of the Iceberg model.
The Iceberg Model
The Iceberg Model helps expand a situation and see an event as a whole system and not as the action itself. It helps one step back and identify the different patterns that the event is part of, the possible structure that might be causing them, and the mental model that is leading to these structures.
It shows new ways of looking at the world around us, we can see them as events occurring or patterns or structures or like a container.
Events: Events are things that happen around us. They are facts about what happened or what we saw. They can be anything from brushing your teeth to a space rocket being launched.
Events are noticed by most of us. It is how we see the world without giving it a deep thought.
Many of these events can be termed as problems, like a door that doesn’t close. The solutions, in this case, tend to be reactive. At this level, people don’t analyze the problem to see why something happened.
Patterns: Just below the waterline, we have patterns. Patterns indicate the re-occurrence of certain events. This may lead to an understanding that these events may not be isolated incidents.
For Example, say “the laptop keeps switching off every few hours”, these are patterns that we are observing, a series of relationships between events and not just one unique occurrence.
When we get to the pattern level, we can anticipate, plan, and forecast. It allows us to adapt to problems so we can react more effectively to them.
Structure: These structures help us explain the pattern. This is when we ask why something is happening. System structure describes how different concepts are interrelated in their own way to form patterns.
For example, the underlying structure of a problem such as recurring oil spills might be our dependence on fossil fuels.
Mental Model: Mental Model defines the thought process that creates the structures behind a specific pattern of events. Mental models are the attitudes, beliefs, morals, expectations, values, or culture that allow structures to continue functioning as they are. These are the beliefs that we often learn subconsciously from our society or family and are likely unaware of.
For example, the lack of rest from excessive work is a product of a mental model surrounding our identity as a hard-working person.
Or what is the mental model of students not coming to class? This lead to a round of giggles and students started describing how they felt theory classes could be heavy and sometimes hard to sit for more than 2 hours.
We went ahead with the same example to analyze the system in it. The event of a student being absent in class had an underlying pattern to it. The students were mostly absent at a practical hands-on class right after the theory session. The systemic structure included mental fatigue. The mental models that led to this were people requiring their own time to understand the concepts before using it.
Class Activity
To understand the applicability of the Iceberg Model, the class decided to do a task, where they selected a topic and mapped the events, patterns, structure, and mental model for it.
The topic selected was Social Media. We just took YouTube for the analysis using the ice-berg model. The events from a user’s perspective being -search, watch, like/dislike, comment, share, etc.
The students decided to stick to one event for the class.
The action was to do an ambiguous search to find a song on YouTube for which the user has no memory or knowledge of the song name, lyrics, and singer.
Doing this exercise helped us understand how every problem had the possibility to have a system around it and can be broken down into patterns and structures and mental models.
This helped us look beyond a surface level event for a problem and understand the relationships to other activities within the system, finding patterns that evolve over time around it and ultimately seeking out the root cause of the problem.
So, in Day-1 we have learned what makes a system, a system, and how breaking it down to different levels using the Iceberg model can help us understand and later help in identifying the actual problem.
In continuation to the activity, an exploration of the hospital registration system modeled to understand the various layers was done by Mrs. Mamata Rao, for a better understanding of the Iceberg model.
Here are the links to the Iceberg Model analysis by the students for their individual project topics. Please go through and don't forget to clap and leave feedback!!!
