Co-designing with relationships in mind

Abstract

We need to move from object-oriented thinking towards relational thinking for many reasons. As public services become more complex, their design has increasingly focused on the relationships between people. The role of the traditional service staff has been shifting from a 'provider', to a 'facilitator', towards 'enabler' of

Systemic design in the Australian Taxation Office – Current practice and opportunities

“…The literature recognises that systemic design is not meant to be a rigid framework (Aguirre Ulloa, 2020; Ryan, 2014) and this reaffirms the importance of tailoring it in the design of an organisation's approach to it. One of the most notable insights that has been shared by designers is the recognition that this flexibility extends past the framework itself into how it is applied to projects.…”

“…Even though design has been increasingly adopted as a practice to deal with public sector challenges, several criticisms have been made of both the practice, and designers’ ability to deal with the complexity of public sector challenges. These criticisms centre on three themes: inability of design to prompt or equip designers to understand and deal with this complexity (Dorst, 2019a, 2019b; Sevaldson, 2013), overfocus on a user or user group at the expense of other users or system elements (Coulton & Lindley, 2019; Sevaldson, 2018; Steen, 2011), and the tendency of design as a practice to degenerate into a formulaic process (Aguirre Ulloa, 2020). The overall implication of these criticisms is that design as it is practised today is unable to counter the criticisms of reductionist approaches in dealing with complex problems, and thus, is not the valuable alternative approach that has been called for.…”

“…As a result, these discussions on the integration of systems thinking and design have led to the emergence of systemic design as a field of research and practice (Lurås, 2016; Sevaldson & Jones, 2019; Sevaldson & Ryan, 2014). Systemic design is not meant to be a rigid framework; instead, it offers a flexible, methodological pluralistic approach (Aguirre Ulloa, 2020; Ryan, 2014) that helps designers to: understand complex systems, and the context of that which is being designed, utilising a range of tools and methods such as visualisation to help make sense of data, emphasise the connections and relationships within the system, include multiple perspectives, identify leverage points, which can help designers see opportunities and identify which interventions may have a significant impact (adapted from Lurås, 2016). …”

Thinking With Things: Landscapes, Connections, and Performances as Modes of Building Shared Understanding

“…The next stage of the workshop process was based on methods arising from Aguirre Ulloa and Paulsen. [18] Participants were asked to augment their landscape models using materials that emphasize connections and relations (elements of this second workshop overlay are visible in Figure 4). Participants were asked: How are the different areas of knowledge related?…”

“…This paper examines a workshop we convened at RSD8: Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium, [17][18][19] October 2019, Chicago: "Tangible Thinking: Materializing how we imagine and understand interdisciplinary systems, experiences, and relationships." The conference proceedings include a more extensive set of references and examples than we could include here.…”