Canadian Government Executive - Volume 22

/ Canadian Government Executive

// December 2016

Design

Peter

Jones

with

Nenad

Rava

ince 2010, experts and academics

eager to connect “systems think-

ing” and policy design have been

meeting annually to share their

research and insights. For the first three

years, Oslo was the convener. For the

second year in a row, Canada has been

the meeting point. In October, they

gathered in Toronto for the 5th “Relat-

ing Systems Thinking and Design” Con-

ference (RSD). The event attracted up-

wards of 300 people.

The event was hosted by OCAD Uni-

versity and the MaRS Discovery District.

It was chaired by the founders of the Sys-

temic Design Research Network (SDRN),

who had organized the conference last

year at the Banff Centre for the Arts. The

theme of RSD5 was “Systemic Design for

Social Complexity.” It focused on com-

plex societal concerns, such as design

approaches for public policy and gover-

nance, sustainable business, agro-ecology,

healthcare systems, and human-centred

urbanism.

A Platform for Policy

Scholarship and Social

Change Results

The annual RSD Symposium is the key

event in the calendar of the Systemic De-

sign community. If Systemic Design is not

as well-known as a practice area as “inter-

action, industrial, and service design,” it is

because of a lack of a major professional

presence in the private sector. The focus

on large-scale systemic problems is more

relevant to public policy and NGO pur-

poses, and not typically the concern of the

corporate clients who hire design service

providers.

Systemic Design has been taught for the

last decade in various schools around the

world (including OCADU) and is practiced

by specialized firms in North America and

Europe that typically work with large in-

stitutional clients in healthcare, food and

agriculture, and government. As a disci-

pline that integrates systems thinking and

cybernetics with human-centered design,

it deals with multi-stakeholder systems

that have expansive boundaries. It adapts

from known design competencies — form

and process reasoning, social and genera-

tive research methods, and sketching and

visualization practices — to describe, map,

propose and reconfigure complex services

and systems.

Linking Policy Innovation

and Systems Thinking:

Toronto’s RSD5 Symposium

The world is catching up. The move-

ment toward design thinking is captur-

ing the attention of business and govern-

ment organizations. Even though these

practices may refer to “systemic change,”

the tools of design thinking are based on

user-centred design, which is insufficient

to effectively respond to systemic, multi-

stakeholder problems. Furthermore, many

systems change approaches or theories of

change are misleading guides to action. It’s

typical for practitioners to gain support for

solutions because everyone expects them

to “scale.” It’s not that easy. They radically

underestimate the resilience of existing

institutions and their cultures, as well as

enduring established power constellations.

The RSD Symposium was designed

from its inception as an engaging (“light-

weight”) conference model that aims to

enhance the quality of participation and

network/relationship building. The sym-

posium is planned as a low-cost, modular

event that encourages students as well as

corporate professionals to attend either

key sessions or the entire event. Content

quality is maintained by the oversight of

a continuing group of chairs that share

knowledge over the course of the events,

and maintain the direction of scholarship

by assessing progress in the continuing

literature streams (e.g. public value, ur-

ban ecology, healthcare, systemic meth-

odology).

The values of “relating,” engagement,

and open dialogue have led to a continu-

ing tradition of high quality keynotes, pro-

gressively stronger workshops, and repeat

presenters committed to a systemic design

research agenda. RSD has created a new