[gond]

Please don’t use Design Thinking.

Design Thinking is a subset of Systems Thinking (this is the polite interpretation). Design Thinking does with its sole existence what Systems Thinking tried to avoid: Another category to put stuff into, divide and conquer. It is an over-simplified version of the original theories.

Better: Jump directly to Systems Thinking, Cybernetics and Systems Theory (and if measurements are more your thing, even try System Dynamics).

I can only recommend that anyone interested in this topic take a look at the work of one of the masters of Systems Thinking, Russel Ackoff:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9p6vrULecFI

This talk from 1991 is several dozen books heavily condensed into one hour.

(Russell Ackoff is considered one of the founders of Operations Research and ironically came to be regarded an apostate as he tried to reform the field he co-founded. He subsequently became a prominent figure of Systems Thinking)

My 2c. I'll show myself out.

[turnsout]

Design Thinking (and more broadly, human-centered design) is a pragmatic framework for doing product design in an effective and productive manner. Systems Thinking is a massively more general superset. I'm not really sure how you'd operationalize that on a design project, except by following first principles, which would essentially get you to DT / HCD.

[gond]

That is exactly the point.

Taking a theory (Systems Thinking), a mental model which has the primary goal of holistically identifying, describing, and understanding wholes and reducing it down to a set of methods/framework out of ease of use (the pragmatism) is exactly the wrong approach in my opinion.

Systems Thinking and all of its applications scenarios are based on epistemology. To turn it into a recipe is a wrongdoing. The whole notion is that one size does not fit all.

The operationalization of Systems Theory for a given case at hand is the responsibility and the transfer function of the operator whose approach this is. The process itself yields understanding and should not be abbreviated.

[turnsout]

I practiced Design Thinking at IDEO for 10 years, and I can assure you it's not "one size fits all." And you can onboard an intern or a client CEO in days, without requiring them to internalize a very abstract system for decomposing problems.

[gond]

>I practiced Design Thinking at IDEO for 10 years

That may possibly explain your motivation but even ten years do not make it right, nor the speed of teaching.

You are saying it yourself: internalising the very abstract system for decomposing and adapting it has a value of its own you cannot replicate by pre-solving it. The spinning-off of Design Thinking only accomplished further segmentation of a space which was already too fractured and was a disservice to the field.

I don’t think we will approach a consensus here, and that’s fine.

[turnsout]

It's always valuable to have a generalizable skill. But design is fundamentally a craft; an applied art. It's problem-solving. And like any craft, there are tools and techniques that are tried and true. You could approach woodworking with a ground-up Systems Thinking approach, but would you turn down the advice of a carpenter with 30 years of experience? Technically all you need to understand woodworking is a physics textbook and maybe an organic chemistry textbook.

My guess is you're a software developer (as I am), and in my opinion the fatal flaw of our group is the incorrect belief that we could do anything or solve any problem by simply decomposing it into smaller and smaller components. The thing is, for a big enough problem, there are an almost infinite number of ways to break it down and then build it back up. In optimization terms, complex projects are highly nonlinear problems, so you may be able to understand what the inputs are, but it sometimes takes wisdom and experience to tune the parameters.

[gond]

Around ten years ago, I was a designer for some 20 years. A strange path led me to a different place which is intermixed or adjacent to the field of organisational theory.

At that time, I decomposed problems too, maybe a bit differently than a developer, I can’t really know. I still decompose, except that the difference to the past is that analysis only makes up one part of the larger whole. I knew many designers which never did either.

I agree with you that there are some areas which do not need theory. That depends on where you define the system boundaries. In the example of a carpenter: Yes, 30 years, the person indeed knows that stuff. One of first question of Systems Thinking, however, would be: What’s the reference system, is his company viable in the future? I very much believe that if you apply this to complex projects, to ‘communication and control’ of an enterprise, that one should know the backstory.

The reductionist approach got us to the problems, applying reductionism to a theory trying to solve reductionism is courageous. In my opinion, the method which is used to teach must incorporate the principle which it is trying to convey. An alternative worldview needs to have a starting point somewhere, and I like to think it starts with the education, which is not to say that I do not understand the urge to speed up absorption of the theory.

[jjk166]

So your argument is don't use an off the shelf tool that gets the job done, build your own tool every time which likely doesn't offer any advantage over the standard tool?

If you think using Design Thinking goes against Systems Thinking, I don't think you really get either.

[gond]

>If you think using Design Thinking goes against Systems Thinking

No, not against. One is a subset of the other. but you are free to prove me wrong.

> likely doesn't offer any advantage over the standard tool?

The process in itself has value. Are you sure about the meaning of epistemological?

[jjk166]

> No, not against. One is a subset of the other. but you are free to prove me wrong.

So what do you mean by "Design Thinking does with its sole existence what Systems Thinking tried to avoid"?

> Are you sure about the meaning of epistemological?

Yes, but I'm not sure why you think it's relevant here.

[gond]

> So what do you mean by "Design Thinking does with its sole existence what Systems Thinking tried to avoid"?

It’s its approach to Systems. Take the 5 stages. Why 5, not 10 or 3? Why stages at all? Who’s to say? Why not enable people to create stages themselves and run from there? Or whatever fits their business.

Why not teach methodology instead of method?

>I'm not sure why you think it's relevant here.

I can only repeat myself: The value is in the process of inquiry itself. Systems Theory is not a set of methods. It is an epistemological based theory and requires a shift in how a person perceives reality, the often cited worldview. How do you know what you know? By assuming 5 stages? Is that objectively induced? What happens to that if looking through the lens of radical constructivism? The theory requires to incorporate multiple worldviews and with that, negates the assumption of an objective truth.

[baxtr]

Someone tried to explain systems thinking to me with respect to a planning effort we had.

I have to admit that it was very hard to me to follow what they were saying.

Maybe I’m dumb, maybe the person didn’t explain it well, or, maybe system thinking is really complex and thus hard to convey and use.

Design thinking on the other hand is easy to understand and apply.

[user_7832]

I have no idea what the exact topic is, but

> maybe system thinking is really complex and thus hard to convey and use.

I'm pretty sure that's not true. If you can follow how A leads to -> B, then that's about it all. Systems thinking is the same principle at a larger scale, with interesting side effects at times (eg network effects/group think/emergent phenomenon showing up).

[logicprog]

I've been very interested in cybernetics and systems thinking lately — would you be able to recommend some good books? I'm not afraid of difficult academic or philosophical reading, but I'm looking for stuff that's large in scope, applies to general fields, etc.

[gond]

There are so many subsets of the theory and I have no idea what would interest you and what you already know. Have you seen this paper?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220231906_The_Origi...

It leans a bit more on the cybernetic side but gives an overview and has what is possibly equally important as the text itself: some 7 pages of references. I started with openly accessible academic papers instead of books. If you find something interest there, you will surely have the direct reference to proceed further into that direction right at hand. Papers are shorter, you can switch the direction more easily. The price to pay is to miss the bigger picture a couple of times (which a book may convey) until some loose ends come together and create an aha moment.

(given what you said I would stay clear of all reinterpretations/popular science books. I would read something straight from the source, the people in the field, in whatever form it may show up.)

[logicprog]

Thanks for that paper! It looks like a good jumping off point. I am primarily interested in the cybernetics side (feedback loops, etc) but applied to social or economic systems, as well as the intersections with Deleuze and Guattari style process philosophy (looking at how every level of the social system, including individuals, is composed of nodes in a network of flows (of desire/memesis, knowledge, material resources, ideas) that the nodes are both somewhat composed by and also transform/switch/break)

[gond]

The social side is, among others, massively covered by Niklas Luhmann, the Zettelkasten guy. [1] is pure 2nd Order Cybernetics. The entry to it is a bit tough, it uses its own language. The precision presented, however, is brutal and you can’t get larger in scope, as it encompasses society as a whole, corporations, law, communication, all of it.

[1] Theory of Society, Volume 1+2

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann

[logicprog]

Oh I didn't realize Niklas Luhmann as the Zettelkasten guy! I use an org mode Zettelkasten (currently migrating to https://iwe.md for reasons) every day for my thoughts and ideas!

[eleventyseven]

Well my 0.2c: in that case it sounds like Systems Thinking is just a subset of Thinking when we live in a world of systems