Applying Systems Thinking in UX Design
Currently working as a user experience designer, the goal in my everyday workflow is to identify and understand our product users’ needs based on their scenarios and pain points to help mitigate problems. Here are a few questions to raise when moving forward with the process: Who are the users? What are their goals? What are the end to end processes? What solutions are being used? Who do they interact with? And what pain points haven’t been identified thus far?
This journey is called the Design Thinking Methodology System that my design team at IBM utilizes and advocates, which is an iterative process. The process to solve one single problem can vary depending on the breadth and depth of the project scope, and many methodologies can be used as long as the goal of the user has been met.
IBM Design Thinking provides a framework, (https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/page/framework) and methodologies (https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/page/toolkit) that designers can leverage.
In order for the Design Thinking process to be integrated effectively into a project, understanding the user’s high level and in-depth use cases, stakeholders and utilized tools are crucial for creating successful outcomes. With my goal of becoming a well-rounded user experience designer, learning about various systems and behaviours in “Thinking in Systems” by Donella H. Meadows and “Business Dynamics” by John D. Sterman has enabled me to look beyond the system that I have grown accustomed to, and to initiate a critical mindset in identifying overlooked variables and their relationships to further predict better outcomes.
Here are key takeaways on Systems that I believe will enhance framing the problems that will drive better design decisions moving forward:
A system isn’t just any old collection of things. (Meadows, 1)
A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. (Meadows, 1)
Systems can be nested within systems. Therefore, there can be purposes within purposes. (Meadows, 4)
Many of the interconnections in systems operate through the flow of information. Information holds systems together and plays a great role in determining how they operate. (Meadows, 3)
You can understand the relative importance of a system’s elements, interconnections, and purposes by imagining them changed one by one. (Meadows, 4)
On Behaviour over Time:
The behaviour of a system arises from its structure (Sterman, 107)
The most fundamental modes of behaviour are exponential growth, goal seeking and oscillation. (Sterman, 107)
Understanding the systems and system behaviour over time is significant in the design process because this may cause delays in users successfully executing actions.
On Delay and Oscillations:
As there are many moving parts and targets in large organizations, it is important to identify any dependencies to avoid delays in deliverables. As Meadows puts it, “Delays are pervasive in systems, and they are strong determinants of behaviour. Changing the length of a delay may (or may not, depending on the type of delay and the relative lengths of other delays) make a large change in the behaviour of a system” (Meadows, 29).
In summary, the concept of understanding the scenarios and changes of the systems aligns with what designers wish to uncover from the product’s users. Based on the readings, systems can be applied in learning about the users on a high level such as identifying their heuristic workflows, and on the contrary, it can be as specific as identifying their business goals, metrics and pain points.
And lastly, here is a reminder from Albert Einstein to constantly simplify for the sake of good design:
“The . . . goal of all theory is to make the . . . basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of . . . experience.” —Albert Einstein,1 physicist (Meadows, 1)
References
Sterman, John D. “Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World”, Irwin McGraw-Hill, 2000, p 107.
Meadows, Donella H. “Thinking in Systems”, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008, pp 1-29.
