Everything is a system: Part Two
In part one of this series, I introduced systems thinking, design thinking, and systemic design. In part two, I’m going to give you a couple of concrete examples of complex systems and their feedback loops, the side effects inherent to reinforcing loops, and the importance of designing for sustainability. The first example is from our natural environment, the second is from one of SuperAwesome’s software products.
In recent years there’s been an increase in natural disasters all around the globe, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, and heatwaves. We can see these as symptoms of an altered state of the Earth system. As natural as they are, studies have shown that their intensity has increased in the last few years. To explain this, let’s have a look at the Earth system and its actors.
Natural feedback loops
Global warming is responsible for ice melting. This is a natural consequence of rising global temperatures. When ice melts, it increases the amount of methane in the atmosphere. In turn, this increases heat concentration in the atmosphere and feeds back into global warming. This is an example of what’s called a reinforcing feedback loop in systems thinking: a loop that feeds itself and leads to exponential growth.
But this isn’t the only feedback loop triggered by ice melting. Ice melting also affects the earth’s surface albedo, which is the measure of diffuse reflection of a surface. Snow and ice have a high albedo (up to 90%), which means that they reflect most of the radiation they receive from the sun and rather than retaining those radiations on earth. With fewer icy surfaces, the Earth will retain more heat which feeds into global warming. This is another reinforcing feedback loop.
Ice melting isn’t the only phenomenon triggered by global warming. Wildfires are equally a consequence of the planet getting warmer and warmer. More fires mean more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and fewer forests to absorb those gases. More greenhouse gases mean more heat retention.
That retained heat has direct and indirect consequences or symptoms. Some of them have a dramatic impact on us who inhabit this Earth and therefore are actors of this Earth system. Europe experienced a terrible heat wave in summer 2003 which led to a health crisis and a high death toll, especially in France. Earlier this year, Australia suffered terrible bushfires which have destroyed millions of hectares of forest and devastated wild animal populations. Typhoons — which have been responsible for tremendous damages — are formed in the warm ocean waters and water temperature influences the intensity of storms.
Seeing these events in a system, as opposed to isolation, surfaces the connections between them. It highlights the loops they’re part of and the impact they have on one another.
Unintentional design
When designing something without thinking about how that thing fits in its wider context and without considering the systemic consequences, we can unintentionally participate in reinforcing a feedback loop.
We, as humans, are actors of the Earth system and suffer the terrible consequences of natural phenomenons. But we also participate in feeding the loops. By burning fossil fuels we increase greenhouse gases emissions which feed global warming. Indirectly, we’re participating in ice melting and wildfires. We’re partially responsible for the symptoms — the natural disasters — that destroy our own habitat.
Making the internet safer for kids sustainably
Kids Web Services (KWS) is one of SuperAwesome’s products. It’s a suite of tools designed to help app developers and brands create kid-safe experiences.
The system within which KWS fits is composed of various actors:
- Customers or brands who want to extend their reach to kids and Young Teens under the age of digital consent.
- Kids and Young Teens who want to enjoy great and safe experiences from their favourite brands.
- Parents who are in charge of managing consent on behalf of their children.
- Regulators, such as the FTC or the ICO, whose job is to make sure that regulations are properly applied.
Existing relationships
KWS aside, there are already existing relationships between those actors. Parents hold authority upon kids and kids seek guidance and authorization from them. Whatever the role KWS wants to take, it’s important not to undermine or override this existing relationship. On the other hand, brands want to appeal to kids but need to do this in a manner that is compliant with the various complex kids privacy and online safety legislation globally.
As a result, to avoid costs, complexity, and the risk of doing something which isn’t compliant, many decide not to let kids in, excluding them by filtering access with an age gate.
The first step to making the internet safer for kids is to acknowledge that there are kids using your product, whether you designed for them or not.
Places that are unsafe — physical or digital — fail to protect people, and especially the more vulnerable. The more kids are ignored, the fewer tools are put in place to ensure they’re safe. Let’s take moderation for example: children’s personal information is very sensitive and every kids privacy law recognizes this. Apps that allow kids to post ‘free text’ messages online must recognize that moderation to remove personal information is a requirement. When companies ignore kids, they ignore the requirement for moderation to remove personal information, which increases the risk of kids’ sharing personal information. The ability to share personal information increases the risk to kids of online predators, which contributes to making the internet a more dangerous place for them.
Counteracting reinforcing loops
In order to act on a feedback loop, it’s important to consider the entire loop. When introducing a change, using a system view highlights its impact in the existing loops, and surfaces the emergence of new loops as the result of that change. At SuperAwesome, we make sure that the decisions we make and the features we implement fit into the kid-safe internet system we want to create.
To ensure kids are ignored less, we offer age-gate functionality that is compliant with kids' data privacy regulations and adapts to each child’s country of registration. We’re also always working with cutting edge technology to try and improve this step as this is a key point of the system. The better we can identify that an individual is a child, the best we can tailor the experience to their needs and protect them.
To ensure parents are involved more, we offer a parental consent flow and parental verification through which we verify a parent’s identity using various compliant technologies adapted to each parent’s country of residence. The more our pool of verified parents — that we call Parent graph — grows, the easier it becomes for parents to manage their child’s consent across all digital games and products.
Finally, to increase parents’ ability to oversee their child’s privacy and personal information use, parents can access our Parent portal to view, edit and manage their child’s personal information and permissions.
Designing for sustainability
By solving the problem of generating more energy through fossil fuels combustion, we failed to anticipate the impact on the Earth system. This may not have been a problem in the short term, as generating energy brought consequent benefits to the industry, but in the long term we may have accelerated a destructive process. This design wasn’t sustainable.
That’s why at SuperAwesome our mission is to make the internet a sustainably safer environment for kids and Young Teens. SuperAwesome is always working at trying to make its technology accessible and easy to implement so that the counteracting loop — or negative reinforcing loop — becomes as big and powerful as possible.
Sustainability is an ethical fight. Laws and regulations are increasingly supporting sustainable designs but it’s up to every decision-maker in the design process to hold themselves (and each other) accountable for examining the systemic impacts and feedback loops of the decisions they make. It’s their job to anticipate and care about the long term impact — whether it’s environmental or social — of their products. Systemic design is a tool that helps us ensure both the quality and sustainability of the products we develop.
In the last article of this series, I’ll be talking about how to design for system change and systemic design methodology. Stay tuned!
