Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers

By Sheryl Cababa and Kevin Bethune

As design continues to impact our products, services, and solutions at scale, it is more important than ever to understand the systems and context that surround design decisions. Closing the Loop will introduce you to a powerful systems thinking mindset and provide you with the tools and frameworks to define the systems that surround your work.

"Cababa's book comes at a crucial moment for design, and points the way toward a more inclusive, meaningful future for our work."
—David Dylan Thomas, author, Design for Cognitive Bias

Who Should Read This Book? This book is for practitioners who want to incorporate systems–thinking methods into their practice. Design researchers, strategists, and experience designers will benefit from the book's tools and instruction to broaden their perspectives, as well as people from technology, healthcare, education, and other spaces in which human–centered design is incorporated.

Takeaways

Readers will learn to:

• Combine user–centered design with systems thinking to understand interconnections and interventions to create goals that benefit society.
• Expand their thinking about what constitutes problem–solving in order to reframe problem spaces.
• Map the status quo in order to better envision the future.
• Kick off primary research by conducting interviews with subject matter experts.
• Use stakeholder maps as a form of analysis and synthesis output.
• Create a causal loop map to articulate systems forces in the form of cause and effect.
• Develop a theory of change to plan initiatives that will lead to the desired outcomes and impact.
• Use the futures wheel as a tool to imagine the impact of decisions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosenfeld Media
• Release date: Feb 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959029878

Sheryl Cababa

Sheryl Cababa drives a human-centered design practice that is focused on systems thinking and evidence-based design, working on everything from robotic surgery experience design to reimagining K-12 education through service design. In her work with consultancies such as Substantial, frog, and Adaptive Path, she has worked with a diverse base of clients including the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, IHME, and IKEA. She holds a B.A. in journalism and political science from Syracuse University. Sheryl is an international speaker and workshop facilitator. When she’s not in the office, she can be found at the University of Washington helping educate the next generation of Human-Centered Design and Engineering students. You might also find her biking around Seattle, or talking about her most recent complicated baking project.

Book preview

Front Cover Art

CLOSING THE LOOP

SYSTEMS THINKING FOR DESIGNERS

Sheryl Cababa

NEW YORK 2023

Design helps people by offering thoughtful solutions, which can also bring unintended consequences. Sheryl’s book urges us to broaden our perspective and provides valuable guidance to bring in to daily practice.

—Hung-Hsiang Chen,

Head of UX & HF at ConvaTec

Cababa’s book comes at a crucial moment for design, and points the way toward a more inclusive, meaningful future for our work.

—David Dylan Thomas,

author, Design for Cognitive Bias

Cababa reminds us of what design was intended to be: a force for positive impact. Through relatable examples and frameworks for thinking plus doing, this book is a guide for designers to practice the design we all want.

—Masuma Henry,

Design Director, Google

As an anthropologist, I know the value of bringing a systems perspective to designing for change. Sheryl’s book is a thoughtful guide for designers seeking to bring more systems thinking to their craft.

—Tracy Pilar Johnson,

Design Anthropologist, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

More than ever, designers are poised to play higher-impact roles. Sheryl Cababa reveals how systems thinking will be the powerful new skill to get us there.

—Brandon Schauer,

Rare.org’s leader of Climate Culture

This is a must-have book for practitioners developing products and services at every level.

—Jose Coronado,

Executive Director Digital Experience Design, JP Morgan Chase

Cababa provides a fresh perspective on how design research and practice can meet the needs of a complex and sometimes contentious 21st century.

—Beth Kolko, Professor,

University of Washington

In her comprehensive, insightful, and actionable guide, Sheryl Cababa draws from real-time and historical global events, expert insights from across industries, and her depth of expertise, challenging us to use systems thinking to shift our own perspectives and assumptions about how to envision and design for a better future.

—Kristin Skinner,

Chief Experience Officer at &GSD and

co-author Org Design for Design Orgs

Closing the Loop

Systems Thinking for Designers

By Sheryl Cababa

Rosenfeld Media

125 Maiden Lane

New York, New York 10038

USA

On the Web: www.rosenfeldmedia.com

Please send errata to: [e-mail]

Publisher: Louis Rosenfeld

Managing Editor: Marta Justak

Interior Layout: Danielle Foster

Cover Design: Heads of State

Indexer: Marilyn Augst

Proofreader: Sue Boshers

© 2023 Sheryl Cababa

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-959029-88-5

ISBN 13: 1-959029-88-6

LCCN: 2022943944

Printed and bound in the United States of America

For Rebecca and Ernesto, who always supported my curiosity

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is for practitioners who want to incorporate systems-thinking methods into their practice. Design researchers, strategists, and experience designers, as well as those from domains such as technology, healthcare, education, and other spaces in which human-centered design is often incorporated, will benefit from this book’s tools and instruction that help broaden perspectives.

What’s in This Book?

This book includes the rationale for incorporating systems thinking into your design practice. You’ll find examples and stories that support that rationale, as well as interviews with experts who engage with systems thinking in their own practice. In order to make the systems-thinking perspective accessible and actionable, you’ll also find practical tools and frameworks that you can include in your practice right away. Prompts, examples, and advice about how to use those tools will help facilitate their use.

This book is designed in three parts. In Chapters 1 through 3, I introduce the rationale for combining design with systems thinking. In Chapters 4 through 6, the focus is on tools and methods to understand the problem space and map the status quo. Lastly, in Chapters 7 through 9, you will learn about tools and methods for envisioning the future.

Within the various chapters, you’ll find some common elements:

• System Spotting: Throughout the book, I’ve included sidebars that are examples of visible systems. These sidebars have events, objects, symbols, and words that you might see in your own cities, in the news, history, or the language that you use. They are good exercises in determining what patterns, structures, and mindsets sit beneath the events you experience and the things you see in the world.

• Interviews: I end many chapters with an interview with an expert design practitioner who engages in systems thinking. I admire and have learned from each of them, and they each have inspiring ways to think about systems, concepts that drive their practice, and tools that you can likely use as well.

This is your plastic hour. From digital technology to global health, you, as a designer, have already been problem-solving in ways that are great and small. By using systems thinking, you can shift your perspectives and assumptions about what you should design and why. Finally, you’ll have a chance to build upon your skills to create an even greater impact. I hope these tools, frameworks, and approaches will help you facilitate that shift.

What Comes with This Book?

This book’s companion website ( https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/systems-thinking-for-designers/) contains a blog and additional content. The book’s diagrams and other illustrations are available under a Creative Commons license (when possible) for you to download and include in your own presentations. You can find these on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/rosenfeldmedia/sets/.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What do you mean by systems thinking?

This is a very good question because you’d be surprised at how many different answers there are to this question. For example, there are ideas and practices oriented around hard systems methodology, which is focused primarily on finding and enacting efficiencies within a given system. This includes approaches such as systems engineering.

In this book, your main concern will be oriented around soft systems methodology, which can be described as understanding a problem space, creating a holistic view of it, and considering where intervention can happen to create certain outcomes.

I feel intimidated by systems thinking as a practice. Can I really use systems thinking as a designer?

Designers sometimes tell me that they feel like systems thinking requires complex software to be able to model causal loop maps and simulate how systems will change. This often feels like a barrier to being able to engage.

The tools that are the focus of this book mostly involve various forms of visual mapping. If you, as a designer, use outputs such as user journeys, service blueprints, or other forms of mapping as analysis, then this approach should resonate with, and feel accessible, to you. You do not need complex software to engage in the mindset of systems thinking and make it actionable in your process. It could be helpful to engage with experts in systems analysis if that’s what your project work requires, but I do not view it by any means as a necessity. As you grow as a systems-thinking-oriented designer, your practice might shift to involve different tools and collaborations with other experts, but this is not a requirement from the beginning.

If you know how to facilitate workshops, engage a diversity of stakeholders, use sticky notes, and create visual maps on paper or in tools like Miro and Mural, then you are already well on your way to being able to incorporate many of the mapping tools and frameworks within this book.

Can systems thinking work with design disciplines such as service design and user experience design?

Systems thinking can absolutely work with these design practices. In Chapter 3, Systems Thinking and Design Thinking, you will find a framework that describes how systems thinking intersects with the typical design-thinking approach. The key thing to remember is that systems thinking is much more of a mindset than a codified set of practices, so you can employ a systems-thinking lens to your existing practice and tools, as well as enhance your current practice with some of the tools and frameworks introduced to you in this book. For example, mapping outputs such as service design blueprints could be paired with outcomes mapping or theory-of-change frameworks to broaden the perspective of how to enact change. (See Chapter 7, Creating a Theory of Change, for mapping tools that are oriented toward envisioning the future.)

Are design systems and systems thinking the same thing?

A design system is, as described by Nielsen Norman Group, a set of standards to manage design at scale by reducing redundancy while creating a shared language and visual consistency across different pages and channels. This includes components of the system and ways of using them.

Systems thinking is a mindset and approach that helps you consider and analyze systems as a whole, consider the relationships within them, and investigate cause and effect that leads to specific outcomes.

So design systems and systems thinking are not the same thing. However, because creating design systems involves creating a pattern language and acknowledging how components affect each other, a systems-thinking mindset intersects with the mindset required to create a design system. The creation of design systems has more alignment with hard systems methodology, whereas soft systems methodology is the main focus of this book. (The Chapter 2 sidebar, The System of Systems Thinking, is good for understanding systems methodology.)

Design systems are not addressed in this book as most of the tools and frameworks are oriented around more broad practices of systems thinking combined with design strategy, but if you are interested in the mindset required for creating good design systems, see the interview with Nicole Sarsfield at the end of Chapter 3.

Do I need to use all the tools and frameworks in this book in order to engage in systems thinking?

You can use whatever tools in this book you find useful for the kind of problem-solving you are engaging with. If, for example, you are using systems thinking to facilitate how your own company or organization can change, you might find analysis tools such as the iceberg model a good way to gain alignment on the problem space. (See Chapter 6, Mapping Forces, for more systems-thinking tools to model the status quo.)

The tools and frameworks outlined in this book are not by any means a codified set of tools that all systems thinkers use. They have been collected from various forms of systems practices, and represent those that I’ve found most useful for design practitioners. There are many more tools out in the world, and I encourage you to continue exploring and growing your practice.

CONTENTS

How to Use This Book

Frequently Asked Questions

Foreword

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

The Shortcomings of User-Centered Design

The Beginnings of User-Centered Design

Users Are Not Just Users

User-Centered Harm and the Limited Impact of Design

UCD and Outside Forces

A Change in Perspective: Systems Thinking

Takeaways

CHAPTER 2

A Systems-Thinking Mindset

A Real-World Case

The Benefits of Systems Thinking

Three Concepts of Systems Thinking

How to Engage in Systems Thinking

Takeaways

CHAPTER 3

Systems Thinking and Design Thinking

Beyond User-Centeredness

Combining Systems Thinking with Design

Addressing the Flaws of Design Thinking

Design as Facilitation

Takeaways

Expert Opinion: Nicole Sarsfield

CHAPTER 4

Collecting Your Data

The Purpose of Your Systems-Thinking Research

Types of Data Collection

The Data Collection Process

Creating a Research Protocol for Engaging with System Stakeholders

Conducting Your System Stakeholder Interviews

Subject Matter Expert (SME) Workshop

Analysis and Synthesis

Takeaways

Expert Opinion: Shree Lakshmi Rao

CHAPTER 5

Synthesis and Mapping Stakeholders

The Synthesis Process

Stakeholder Mapping

Understanding Bounded Rationality

Comparative Stakeholder Mapping

Takeaways

Expert Opinion: Dr. Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon

CHAPTER 6

Mapping Forces

Forces and Events

Creating a Causal Loop Map

Deep Structure, Root Cause, and the Goal of a System

Identifying System Archetypes

Other Types of Systems Maps

Takeaways

Expert Opinion: Boon Yew Chew

CHAPTER 7

Creating a Theory of Change

Identifying Interventions

Defining a Theory of Change

Mapping Initiatives and Interventions

Framework 1: Outcomes Mapping

Framework 2: From Input to Impact

Takeaways

Expert Opinion: Dr. Behnosh Najafi

CHAPTER 8

Anticipating Unintended Consequences

Techno-Optimism and the Law of Unintended Consequences

How Merton’s Framework Affects the Designer’s Work

Creating Dialogue About Unintended Consequences

Prompts That Broaden Perspectives

Takeaways

Expert Opinion: Dr. Dimeji Onafuwa

CHAPTER 9

Speculative Design Futures

What Is Speculative Design?

Examples and Forms of Speculative Design

Who Is Engaging in Speculative Design?

The Benefits of Imagining

Takeaways

Expert Opinion: Adrienne Matthews

Coda

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

FOREWORD

What does it mean to serve people in today’s converging world where change is a constant? If the last few years have shown us anything from COVID-19, societal imbalance, and climate change, the playbooks that explain how we should serve people need to change. How might we revisit our institutions and industries to instigate systemic, positive change?

Despite advances in the proliferation of design thinking and human-centricity over the last couple of decades, the business world continues to suffer from a cloud of ambiguity concerning design’s application in business. This ambiguity is exacerbated when the speed of the clock becomes exponentially faster, thanks to digital technology and increasing global connectivity.

Enter Closing the Loop where Sheryl Cababa leverages her more than two decades of diverse experiences to offer us clarity about this dilemma. While many design practitioners cite the virtues of being human-centric and making the end user the hero, Sheryl helps us understand the potential cascade of unintended consequences from every design and business decision. She opens our aperture.

As a design practitioner myself, I love that Sheryl implores us to question our own positionality, power, and privilege with a healthy dose of humility. Because, if we resort to the typical design-thinking process of empathizing with end users and imagining solutions, we probably filter what we hear from people through our own myopic biases and create further harm.

Instead, by integrating system thinking into our approach, we can leverage alternative techniques, like using causal loop maps to study counterintuitive effects to really test our foundational assumptions. We can also push back on the prevalence of techno-optimism that doesn’t consider unintended consequences, by leveraging tools like the futures wheel to study first- and second-order effects.

To rise above the fray of marketers marketing and consumers consuming, Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers provides us with a plethora of accessible frameworks to systematically address the who, what, why, and how behind our work. Consequently, we stand a better chance of shaping our preferred futures with better tools in hand through the rubrics that Sheryl provides.

The bottom line: This is probably the best body of work on systems thinking that I’ve run across in quite a while. Kudos to Sheryl!

—Kevin Bethune

Author, Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation, and founder, dreams • design + life

INTRODUCTION

The Plastic Hour

For the first time in my generation, the COVID-19 pandemic is the first truly global event that has touched every single person in one way or another. The whole series of events and their impact on every layer of society is a reminder of how interconnected everything is. It shines a light on how the systems around us, from logistics to education to media to finance, are fragile and ill-designed to handle catastrophic events. In addition, some systems didn’t even exist in the past. The COVID-19 virus spread undetected for months because most countries, including the U.S., lacked virus surveillance networks and other tracking mechanisms that might have curtailed the contagion.

With catastrophe, however, comes opportunity. The world is now recognizing the importance of shared global health communication, government and community social safety nets, and flexibility and adaptability in their economic systems. Moments of hope spring from moments of darkness, and a window opens that allows societies to question the way things work and to work toward something better. The philosopher Gershom Scholem referred to moments like this as plastic hours: Namely, crucial moments when it is possible to act. If you move then, something happens. The writer George Packer elaborated on this idea by saying, In such moments, an ossified social order suddenly turns pliable, prolonged stasis gives way to motion, and people dare to hope.

For designers working in technology, this is a moment to act. Perhaps you are a UX designer working on digital products, or a service designer crafting experiences. You might be wondering how your work connects to the greater good, or how you as a designer can use design as a skill to work toward a world that is more fair, safe, equitable, and joyful for everyone, and not just those who hold power.

I’ve worked as a human-centered design practitioner for years, in product design, design research, and design strategy, both in-house and in consultancy. I’ve been a staunch believer that design, because of its focus on human connection, is a powerful force for impact. However, a few years ago, I came to realize that the tools we use in human-centered design are fairly narrow and may even cause harm. These tools can be used to consolidate, rather than disrupt power, to reinforce the status quo, and to harm those at the margins of society. On top of that, design methods are often used to employ, as the RSA noted, efficiency innovations rather than empowering innovations.¹

In response, I started broadening my lens and my methods to integrate tools, such as causal loop diagrams, that are typically associated with systems thinking. This has benefitted my practice in centering analysis on understanding problems by extending who I think of as stakeholders, broadening the ideas of what constitutes problem-solving, and gaining a more holistic view than I ever had as a UX designer. In practice, this means creating and using visual frameworks to map relationships and causality, essentially extending skills that many designers already employ, but through a systems lens. There’s a quote that is often (I assume apocryphally) attributed to Albert Einstein: If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.

There are times in which I combine ideas that are not necessarily explicit within systems-thinking literature. One of those concepts is positionality. Researcher positionality has been acknowledged, for example, by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber in their foundational paper about wicked problems (though using different terms). It basically means that researchers and designers need to acknowledge their own background, perspectives, and biases in order to engage in the work accordingly. Additionally, systems thinking pushes designers to acknowledge other peoples’ expertise—lived expertise as well as professional expertise—and involve and facilitate that knowledge. Participation in the process is key. Designers have the power to further empower others, and with this, they can all have a greater impact.

CHAPTER 1

The Shortcomings of User-Centered Design

The Beginnings of User-Centered Design

Users Are Not Just Users

User-Centered Harm and the Limited Impact of Design

UCD and Outside Forces

A Change in Perspective: Systems Thinking

Takeaways

As a designer working in technology, I never thought I would see Black Mirror, the BBC show focused on a future of dystopian technologies, used for product inspiration.

I was in an ideation workshop with a client team that was working on a design strategy for augmented reality. We were talking about potential features and adding sticky notes with ideas to a whiteboard. During our discussion, we started talking about potential unintended consequences to features and design decisions. One of my colleagues brought up an example from the show Black Mirror in which soldiers, implanted with an augmented reality system, saw other humans as monsters that must be killed.

We discussed it for a bit, and everyone was quiet. Finally, one of our clients spoke up.

Yeah, that’s a good idea—add it to a note on the whiteboard.

Add what? my colleague asked.

You know, the idea that people can use avatars and disguise themselves.

It was one of the key moments in which I realized that our methods—our user-centered design methods—were failing us.

We reminded our client that, no, Black Mirror wasn’t meant to be a feature inspiration—rather, it’s a cautionary tale. We reminded him that it’s a good example of showing the ramifications of technology—that not all scenarios are good. And that even if he were thinking of it strictly from the technical problem-solving perspective, that the horror of it should give him pause.

It showed me that the ideation process was too myopic, too idealistic, and way too technology-solution-centered.

And so is the rest of user-centered design.

The design practice is experiencing a critical moment in time. Designers design products and services, especially in technology, that often have millions, and even billions, of users, yet they often fail to see design beyond individual users and the immediacy of their interactions with the products and services they work on. They often fail to anticipate and design for the impact on those who are not the direct users of their products, or for long-term effects on those they design for. And before that, they fail to clearly understand the problem space and the context in which their products will live.

In order to address the problems of user-centered design, you first need to understand what it is, why this is an approach that is widely used, and why it’s so problematic in the first place.

The Beginnings of User-Centered Design

If you’ve ever seen a Dutch bike, known as an omafiets, you might notice that it’s got quite a different design than the typical racing bike or modern commuter bike. Its handles are swept back, curved toward the rider in a way that keeps your arms and wrists free of pressure when you are sitting upright on the bike (see Figure 1.1). This type of bike is a good example of user-centered design: it’s meant to make the act of riding the bike more comfortable and enjoyable. It’s designed for the context in which these types of bikes are used, such as getting to work, carrying kids, running errands, all while wearing street clothes, which is quite a different context than, say, a racing bike. It’s a design decision made more than a century ago that prioritizes how the rider experiences the bike. It does not appear to have prioritized a more efficient manufacturing process, or cheaper materials, although perhaps with the popularity of this design over time, these processes may have responded to the demand. Ultimately, it’s a