Everything is a system
The word Karma is broadly used to explain why someone who did something awful eventually experiences payback when things backfire. But in yoga, Karma means action — or more specifically, the concept of cause and effect. Everything you do has consequences.
Karma is meant to encourage you to think twice before doing something that could influence your future or impact other people. According to the law of Karma, if you want to intentionally craft a life of contentment and peacefulness — if you want to do your best to impact the Karma feedback loop — then you should carefully consider your intentions and actions.
Good design is good Karma.
Karma is a fairly simple system to conceptualise because its lens is pretty narrow. It’s all about yourself: your intent, your actions, your impact, your life. The rest is up to the Universe (and sometimes Mercury in retrograde). That’s convenient.
Some systems are more complex, though. They involve many parts with various power dynamics and sometimes even unspoken conflicting interests. They must be designed thoughtfully.
System: a definition
A system is a group of components that interact with one another. When the components start interacting it affects the behaviour of the whole system, which directly depends both on the components themselves and the way they interact with each other.
When the driver presses the accelerator and engages first gear, the vehicle moves forward. When anomalies arise, they are the symptom of an altered state of the system. They can be the result of a damaged part, a broken relationship between components, or an unexpected element added to the mix. For example, if a tire is flat, the car won’t behave the same. If the brake pads are worn, the car won’t slow down as expected.
A system is more than the sum of its parts
When you look at each part individually, you can’t infer the behaviour of the whole system. The interactions between each part are key to understanding how the system functions.
Feedback loops
Since everything is interconnected, there are constant feedback loops and flows between elements of a system whether we design for it or not. Systems thinking invites us to shift from a linear mindset (doing A leads to B) to a circular one (doing A leads to B, and B affects A in return). We can observe, understand, and act on the feedback loops using different feedback loops once we understand their type and dynamics.
Reinforcing versus balancing
There are two types of feedback loops: reinforcing and balancing.
Reinforcing feedback loops can be positive or negative. When negative, they bluntly counteract the effect of an existing loop (think about the brakes in your car). When positive, they push it further (like the accelerator). Eventually reinforcing feedback loops lead to exponential growth. On the other hand, balancing feedback loops are designed to adjust themselves to correct a behaviour and lead to stability, like an Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) system.
Knowing the nature of the loop you want to affect, as well as the expected outcome of your system, will help you determine the nature of the loop you have to design and implement in your system.
Systems thinking
“Systems thinking is a disciplined approach for examining problems more completely and accurately before acting. It allows us to ask better questions before jumping to conclusions.
Systems thinking often involves moving from observing events or data, to identifying patterns of behavior overtime, to surfacing the underlying structures that drive those events and patterns. By understanding and changing structures that are not serving us well (including our mental models and perceptions), we can expand the choices available to us and create more satisfying, long-term solutions to chronic problems.” — Michael Goodman
At SuperAwesome, we like challenges. Making the internet safer for kids is not a straightforward mission; it involves many actors and a great deal of relationships.
This complexity is also reflected in our products. They’re used by professionals from various backgrounds and roles, from developers to advertisers and content creators, for different purposes. They’re also sometimes used by the public, including parents and kids. They are implemented by customers with countless use cases and objectives, and they’re built following strict government compliance guidelines that vary by country and sometimes even by state.
A large amount of actors and resources, various power dynamics, plurality of scenarii but one single mission.
Understanding the big picture and how the parts relate to one another is key to building, improving, prioritising and maintaining our products and, to some extent, our business.
Systemic design
Systemic design is the convergence of systems thinking and design thinking.
Both systems thinking and design thinking have in common that they invite us to look at the big picture.
Applying systems thinking before starting to design is especially helpful when dealing with a complex product, or a product that takes part in a complex system or organisation. Design thinking is practical and will help you find the best solution. Systems thinking will make sure you consider all the parameters beforehand, so your chosen solution will benefit the purpose of the whole system.
This article is the first of a series about systemic design. In the next article, I’ll be talking about practical ways to design systemically, the method and tools I’m using, and how to successfully design for system change. Watch this space!
