Designing within Fourth Industrial Revolution

Our insights for designing under technological change today.

The Designing Web3 Series is a set of articles that will be published throughout Q1/Q2 2023 to explain what design means to Verum Capital and why we believe our updated approach to digital design is so important for solving problems within the Web3 space. In this third article, we explain why Web3 and Blockchain (as technological innovations under the fourth industrial revolution) need a different approach to design and problem solving that includes systems thinking. We also share our high level insights to date for designing within this space.

This Time is Different: Understanding the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The fourth industrial revolution describes the leaps in technological progress that have been made since the digital revolution, which began in the mid to late 20th century. Unlike the last three, the fourth industrial revolution is not distinct. It builds on the digital revolution and is characterized by a much more ubiquitous and mobile internet, by smaller, cheaper, yet more powerful sensors, and by artificial intelligence and machine learning. (Schwab, 2016)

Throughout the last two centuries, the term revolution has been used to describe moments when technologies and novel ways of perceiving the world trigger a profound change in economic systems and social structures. The first agrarian revolution in the second half of the 18th century was followed by three more and each marked an incremental shift from muscle to mechanical power. It was only in the last century that humanity evolved into what we know today. However, with the fourth industrial revolution, enhanced cognitive power is augmenting human production. Unlike the previous three, the fourth industrial revolution will introduce technology at an exponential rate, generate unprecedented paradigm shifts through the combination of existing technologies, and affect the entire planet through system-wide implications. (Schwab, 2016)

The complexity, interconnectedness, and exponential rate of advancement is already palpable: over 90% of the data in existence was created in just the last two years. This acceleration makes living through the fourth industrial revolution unique. The simultaneous breakthroughs in areas that include gene sequencing, nanotechnology, renewables, and quantum computing are leading to an interaction of technologies across the physical, digital, and biological domains. (Schwab, 2016) The fourth industrial revolution is changing the way we communicate, connect, and interact as a species and it will require that we structurally rethink and redesign economic, social, and political systems.

To confront the challenges that will arise during the fourth industrial revolution, we will need to create new ecosystems for essential but also unforeseeable interactions to occur. These ecosystems will also have to support development, commerce, and governance. The challenges for the next generation of designers will be incredibly integrated because so many facets of contemporary society are being disrupted, from social codes to business models, centralized governance to resource management.

A New Approach: Re-thinking in Systems

A design approach for the fourth industrial revolution must be capable of reorganizing social, economic, and political systems. To do this, it will need to leverage the best practices from each previous iteration of design science: it will be necessary to reengage with the early definition of a “wicked problem”, one that is incredibly complex, social, and systemic; it will be necessary to reassert early value systems, which were focused on improving life for the masses; and it will be necessary to reimagine UX and digital design for interfacing with post-internet technologies. But finally, and most urgently, it will need to build up its capabilities for enabling communication, construction, strategic planning, and systemic integration. For this, it would be wise to explore a much younger area of inquiry: systems thinking.

Systems thinking is a unique interdisciplinary approach that has been referenced back to Aristotle, who laid its foundations by analyzing the world in terms of “object assemblages united by an interaction of parts”. (Frakes & Linder, 2020) Ludwig von Bertalanffy, an Austrian biologist, was one of its early pioneers in the 1930s. He believed that to separate living from non-living matter, scientists needed to understand not just the microscopic particles, but also how those particles influence each other and their ecosystem. (Frakes & Linder, 2020) Ever since, systems thinking has remained a general approach to thinking about systems of all kinds. It is not a discipline with defined borders, but rather comprises an interdisciplinary conceptual framework that can be adapted to many areas. (Shaked & Schechter, 2017) The most popular understanding of systems thinking came from MIT, where Jay Forrester founded system dynamics in the 1950s. Later, in the 1990s, Peter Senge, who was a student of Forrester’s, published the bestselling book The Fifth Discipline, and brought awareness of systems thinking into the mainstream. (Frakes & Linder, 2020) The popular definition of systems thinking is now typically described as a mindset: a way of seeing and talking about reality that recognizes the interrelatedness of things. It emphasizes the emergent properties of the whole that neither arise directly, nor are predictable, from the properties of the parts. (Vassallo, 2017)

Systems thinking is the complementary approach that design science requires to tackle the systemic challenges that will be presented by the emerging technologies of 2020’s. But most importantly, it will course correct for the dead end that “design thinking” has introduced into the evolution of the design discipline. Systems thinking creates a holistic perspective that is not prioritized in today’s “design thinking”, by approaching the whole as a complex product of the parts’ interactions, rather than their simple sum. Where “design thinking” focuses on offering empathy to users, systems thinking offers empowerment. Integrating its practices will be necessary for data-driven, structural change, the development of new, essential platforms for communication, and assembling and organizing communities in new and inclusive ways.

Early Conclusions: Insights for working within complex systems (like Web3 ecosystems)

As a Web3 Venture Studio, Verum Capital is strictly concerned with distributed ledger technology and blockchain protocols. We do not work with any and all of the technologies that pertain to the fourth industrial revolution. However, we believe that blockchain and its ability to present the world with new ways to transact, interact, collaborate, and even socialize is an important, foundational technology under this current revolution. Web3 protocols, L1s, L2s, all represent complex systems.

Over the past six years, while delivering over 90 engagements with an approach that is infused with systems-thinking, our team has come up with five insights that drive our overarching approach to design. These insights illustrate the urgency for integrating system-focused thinking into a new design approach.

Insight №1: You cannot disrupt a disruptor.

If the current industrial revolution is cumulative, building on the last, it will become increasingly difficult to design for disruptive change. The reason for this is that previous disruptions tend to resist change and cling to out-of-date technology to maintain their own disruptor status. New approaches to design will need to focus on the context of disruption, rather than attempting to iterate on an isolated instance of disruption or a specific technology.

Insight №2: Awareness of secondary effects is vital.

When taking intentional actions, be prepared for unintentional reactions. A bias to action could lead to an intervention that produces unforeseeable consequences within new interconnected systems. Designers and change-makers must understand the full extents of the ecosystems they are working within, they must also know where and when to intervene.

Insight №3: Making connections is a necessary skill.

Lateral thinking and adapting existing models to solve new problems has remained a standard skillset for designers throughout the 20th century. But as technology fundamentally changes how people communicate and interact, designers will need to be able to make connections within increasingly complex ecosystems. It is important to understand the complex interactions occurring between agents within a system and between the agents and the system they are participating in.

Insight №4: Design the system, then apply the technology.

Technology can drive new opportunities, but new opportunities will not arise if we apply that technology to the status quo. We call this skeuomorphism. We must find new ways of doing things and ask new technology to facilitate that change. Designers and change-makers will need to be capable of identifying incremental steps toward a desired future, so that technological development can keep pace with our ability to envisage new futures.

Insight №5: The leaders of the last revolution are not the leaders we need today.

The radical technologists of the 1960’s called for a design revolution after WWII, they weren’t led by the modernists or their approach to rational design science in the 1920’s. Similarly, the fourth industrial revolution does not necessarily need the business leaders of the digital revolution who championed “design thinking” and digital innovation. Post-internet technologies are different beast and a fourth wave of design science is needed in the form of another revolution. Existing leaders in the space will need to rethink, reinvent, and rebel against the status quo to stay relevant.

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