Essential UI/UX Design Principles: A Comprehensive Guide
Sdc17 remko systemic design open heart and open mind
1. OPEN MIND, OPEN HEART:
EXPLORING THE
DYNAMICS OF A SYSTEM
AS A WHOLE
Dr Remko van der Lugt
Professor of Co-Design
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences
Remko.vanderlugt@hu.nl
NOTE: I mad extended
annotations in the sheets in
order to make them more
comprehensible. I also included
pictures of the concise
constellation workshop that we
did during the presentation.
2. Earplugs
My son, 19, loves music,
regards his hearing as an
important instrument and
still…. does not use hearing
protection at concerts…
He used to be very
protective of his hearing ,
when he was younger ,15
or so, and was insistent on
getting high-end hearing
protection. But he does
not use the earplugs
anymore…
3. Earplugs • It is very hard to get young people to wear hearing
protection at concerts, even though sound level is way
too high, which can cause permanent damage.
• Question of foundation, that commissioned the
project: How to get young people to wear hearing
protection at concerts and festivals?
4. Toolkit
Behavioural
Lenses
Behavioural change is very ’in’ at the moment. Behavioral psychology
focusses on the persuasion of the individual. Systemic patterns and
issues are only included as external forces on the individual.
A systemic lens provides an additional viewpoint, addressing the
system as a whole.
5. In a campaign to support use of earprotection, many
touchpoints are developed over the journey of the
concert-goer (using the behavioural lenses toolkit from
previous slide). Each crying out: Use ear protection! At
bus stop, when ordering tickets, when planning journey,
at cash register, at the bar, in the toilet stall, etc. And
yet…
Source: Graduation rapport JasperWelsing, 2014
6. <-Systemslevel->
```Organization
Socio-technical
regime
Society
Peer group
View from
system as a
whole needed
Next to individual considerations of my son,
the young adult, other issues play a role that
may inhibit or overpower individual behavior
change/persuasion efforts. Systemic patterns
can be very persistent. Need for other ways to
address these within such ‘behavior change’
projects. One such ways is gigamapping, in
order to retain a view of the whole system. In
Scharmer’sTheory U framework, ths could be
seen as serving the ‘Open Mind’. An additional
way can be found in Organisational
Constellations, which address sensing the
patterns and forces of the system as a whole,
in Scharmer’s terms , this could be related to
serving the ‘Open Heart’.
7. Grounded in
various perspectives
Organisational learning
• Ehrenfield
• Senge
• Scharmer
• Snowden
Transition Management
• Rotmans & Lohrbach
Holistics
• Harding
• Capra, Goethe, etc.
Systemic design
• Jones, Nelson & Stolterman, Sevaldson,etc
Systemic PhenomenologicalWork
• Hellinger
• Stam
12. Caution:
Stakeholder maps
• Tend to oversimplify and pull the system
apart in individual interactions thus loosing
the emergent qualities of the system.
• Describe the system as a solid state, a
snapshot, rather than addressing the
dynamics
• Focus on rational value exchange, with a
bias towards exchange of economical value
e.g. Den Ouden, 2012
13. Some thoughts
on gigamaps
and related
representations
of the whole
system
• Focus may become too much on form (wow, that is a
cool gigamap!):The gigamap itself becomes the sole
purpose of design, rather than helping the problem
forward.
• A wild thought: Investing time and effort in getting a
clear view of the system as a whole may also inhibit
change, as it may fortify the current state of the
system?
15. Systemic
Constellations
• Stam: “Organizations do not have a
conscience, but they behave like they
do”
• Collective conscience relates to:
-Belonging (who or what is excluded?)
-Exchange of take and give
-Order (is there clear and just order in
the system? Is everybody in the right
place?
Systemic phenomenological approaches,
based on work of Bert Hellinger on Family
constellations. Jan Jacob Stam, a student of
Hellinger’s, used same principles in an
organizational context.
16. Systemic
Constellations
A constellation uses people or things to create a
representation or a system, to sense the patterns,
tensions, and to prototype possible directions for
movement.
The constellation generates energy/tensions, etc in the
room. Requires checking whether it represents/informs
about the real system in the world. And then there are
systemic principles that can inform insight.
Principles
Energy
Real system
”I don’t trust constellations: I am convinced that they work, but I never trust them.”
Jan Jacob Stam
17. ‘Tabletop’
constellations: a
procedure
1) Interview -What’s the sytemic
question? System of people of
functions?
2) Place items on surface to represent
current system. Sense from different
items
3) Remove, clear the space
4) Dream question (slow, what if you
wake up, and the world has changed
into the perfect situation, what would
the system look like then?
5) Now place new constellation.
Explore.
6) Back to constellation:What is first
thing you can do to make change set
in?
19. Tabletop
Constellation:
Recycling of
frying fat
Client ‘feeling into’ a representative
cup of a stakeholder in the system.
Here I ask the question, touch the
object, and notice what you become
aware of. How is it to be in that
position?
20. Stakeholder
constellations
Can be used for:
• Diagnosis
• Exploring possible scenarios
• Doing a systemic intervention (only if a client, with
agency to actually make a change in the real world is
present).
21. Back to the
earplugs case:
an example
constellation
exercise during
the
presentation
• Challenge for for a constellator is to set up the minimal
representatives needed to get a sense of the dynamics
in the system.Too many creates a blurry view in whch
it is difficult to see patterns and possibilities
• In the exercise we set up a constellation as system of
functions. Main question was: How come that even
though young adults and professionals are well aware
of the dangers of hearing damage at festivals, they do
not act to protect hearing health?
• We set up representatives for: young adult, peer
group, venue owner, hearing doctor, rock band,
government
22. Begin state
Rock
podium
owner
Government
(out of view in
the audience)
Ear doctor
Rock band
Volunteers represent
different
functions/stakeholders
in the system.They use
their senses (hearing,
seeing, but mostly
feeling in the body) to
give insight as to how it
is to be at that
position.
I, as a constellator, ask
representatives what
they become aware of.
Sensing, rather than
giving interpretations.
23. Intervention
• Government is far away from it all.The stage owner mentions
that he kind of likes that the government is far away and that
his head is turned away. HE dislikes the government.
Government mentions that he does not really care, is busy with
other things.
• As a constellator I get the urge to increase the pressure: So I
push the government physically towards the rest of the
constellation. Government strongly resists.
• As government is moving in the whole constellation shifts.
By probing, making tentative interventions, you get
a sense of the dynamics in the system. Always check
with client, whether what’s happening connects to
the real system. (e.g. are we in the right movie?). If
not, return to previous state and try out something
else.
24. New state
Peer group
Government
Ear doctor
Rock band
Rock
podium
owner
A state of relative equilibrium
is found.Then I ask questions
like: For whom changed
something?What is different?
What do you notice? Is it
better, worse or the same?
25. The first
movement
• Finally, we brought the constellation back to the begin
state. Knowing that the government needed to turn
towards the rest of the constellation as a first
movement, I asked the designers (the audience): What
kind of an intervention could make this happen? Some
suggestions were made.Then we had to stop because
of time constraints.
26. Some notes to
be aware of
1(2)
• It is essential to create a safe space in which people feel
free to move and surrender to sensing rather than
thinking and rationalizing. In constellation terms this is
referred to as creating ‘holding space’.
• Constellations can be quite slow. It can be important to
ask representatives to withhold the (sometimes
strong) urge to move in order to be able to investigate
and make explicit the forces present at the current
state of the system. This is impossible if everybody
moves around all the time (even though that could be
an approach in its own right, more related to dance
improvisation, such as Social PresencingTheatre
(Hayashi, A., 2010).
Hayashi, A.( March, 2010). Feminine Principle andTheory U. Oxford Leadership Journal,V1, I2
27. Some notes to
be aware of
2(2)
• Functioning as a representative is NOT acting.We noticed
that volunteering designers at the presentation stepped
‘on stage’, and started to play a role. Not strange, as play-
acting is an accepted work form in design practice.
However, in constellations, being a representative
meaning positioning yourself in your physicality as a
sensory instrument through which changes in the system
can be noticed and expressed.This requires being, rather
than performing a role.
• In traditional constellations, volunteers are independent
representatives, not related to the system at hand. A client
who wants to learn about a systemic problem or question
is guided by a constellator in order to set up a
constellation.The constellation in the case example was
created by collective input from attendees in the room.
This made it impossible to check whether whatever
happened in the room represented the real world system.
28. In conclusion some
considerations and
questions:
Social constructivist
scaffolding v.s.
systemic
phenomenological
exposing systemic
forces.
Constellations can be done from two fundamental viewpoints: On the one hand,
cognitive scaffolding, which we are very familiar with in the field of design (think
contextmapping and generative techniques, e.g. Sanders & Stappers), using
materials as things to think with in order to scaffold deeper conversations. On the
other hand, the systemic phenomenological approach of opening up, sense and
respond to whatever presents itself in the space (Roevens, 2008).This requires
letting go of analysis and taking a wider view.
During the session, we noticed that we as designers are tempted to mash the two
viewpoints. However, as they require different mindsets (zooming in, rationalizing
v.s. zooming out and perceiving), the insight easily becomes blurred. It may be
interesting to explore more explicit utilization of the two viewpoints, for instance
by altering them, without mashing them together. A first attempt at this was
done by Adrian Paulsen and Manuela Aguirre in their workshop on ‘mapping the
invisible’, in which they adapted their approach focused on making connections
between stakeholders visible through threads and ropes of different textures and
colors (social constructivist scaffolding) Instead of their approach of using
physical objects to represent stakeholder hubs, they tried out working with
volunteers as representatives.
Roevens, J. L. M. (2008). Systemic constellations work in organizations
