Systemic Mirrors

At the Relating Systems Thinking & Design symposium RSD12, Carine van Loon and I presented a new concept in systemic design, which we refer to as ‘systemic mirroring’: designing an object that provides system stakeholders with a different perspective on the system they are part of. It confronts them with their beliefs about the system and their role in it. We hope that such mirrors support stakeholders in redesigning the system from the inside out. We illustrate the concept with Carine’s graduation project in which she designed a children’s book that reflects the care system around parents with a child with special needs. You can watch our presentation here.

Systemic Design Principles in Social Innovation

Hello 2021! The second half of 2020 was very hectic and as a result I have failed to update this blog with the news that Bridget Malcolm and myself finally published our study on Systemic Design Principles in She Ji – The Journal of Design, Economics and Innovation. This is the result of a study we started in 2016 into public and social innovation practices. In the article we show which principles the participating social innovation organisations used that build on systems thinking and design, and what we can learn from them. I hope you enjoy it!