Boiling the Ocean: Complexity, Service Design, & Systems Thinking

- Through the application of Systems Thinking it is evident that a small shift in one thing can result in big changes across the whole.
- Complex problems are the result of interconnected causes with many interlaced unknown factors.
- Intervention within complex issues will typically see new problems emerge as a result. - Efforts to impose change will result in a partial positive impact. However, in the long term, there will likely be negative unintended consequences if changes are not integrated well into the system.
- It is only when there are structural changes being made to a system that we begin to see a positive sustained impact across all areas of the system as well.

Transcript

1. Boiling the Ocean: complexity, service design, & systems thinking ©2020 Andrew Polaine Future of Now Andy Polaine – Service Design & Innovation Training and Coaching Andy Polaine 2nd July 2020
2. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Listen to the puppet, you should. Image © Lucasfilm/Disney
3. ©2020 Andrew Polaine These are not the flowers you think they are Image source & ©: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/
4. ©2020 Andrew Polaine These are discarded bikeshare bikes – the physical consequences of “digital” disruption. Image source & ©: https://www.wired.com/story/photo-of-the-week-a-dizzying-view-of-a-bicycle-graveyard-in-china/
5. ©2020 Andrew Polaine VC funding, user focus and scale Photo by Lucian Alexe on Unsplash
6. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Excessive growth has consequences Photo by Damir Spanic on Unsplash
7. ©2020 Andrew Polaine This is related to… Photo by Wolfgang Mennel on Unsplash
8. ©2020 Andrew Polaine … this, which is related to… Photo by Antoine Giret on Unsplash
9. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Photo by Sifan Liu on Unsplash … this, which is related to…
10. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash … this, which is related to…
11. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash …this. And on and on it goes.
12. Photo by Charles on Unsplash No interface works without an ecosystem and few “products” are standalone these days. ©2020 Andrew Polaine It’s not complicated. It’s complex. Designing for complexity means designing for the detail and the big picture simultaneously.
13. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Sometimes you need to boil the ocean. Photo by Ricardo Resende on Unsplash
14. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Designing for exponentially nested ecosystems requires tackling complexity head on, zooming between layers. Political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal ecosystems Business ecosystems Multi-channel service Single touchpoint
15. ©2020 Andrew Polaine If we fail to tackle complexity with complex thinking, we’re doomed to oversimplify and produce simplistic solutions that fail. “The complex is not complicated” pln.me/complex
16. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Jacob Lund Fiskar “Nonlinearity is inherently much harder to deal with than linearity. In fact, a tremendous amount of effort goes into linearizing problems to make them understandable and solvable. The solution to the simplified problem is not necessarily the solution to the original problem. Furthermore, the simpler problem does not show the richness of solutions of the original problem.”
17. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Money, borders, laws, markets, norms — all these things that feel so concrete and fixed were once designed. This means they can be re-designed.
18. ©2020 Andrew Polaine 02. Some examples
19. ©2020 Andrew Polaine How disconnected touchpoints can wreck an ecosystem
20. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Hi Myki! You look cool. Just touch on and off then, yeah?
21. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Oh, okay.
22. ©2020 Andrew Polaine How about swiping it? No?
23. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Wave it in front? No?
24. Sorry, I can’t quite read that in time. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
25. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Maybe the machine will help. Oh dear.
26. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Please explain? Yarra tram “tips.” “When you travel with myki on a tram you don't always need to touch off at the end of your journey. That's because you can now travel from one end of a tram route to the other on a Zone 1 fare. On three tram routes - 75, 86 and 109 - the ends of the line furthest from the city have a short Zone 2 section (which overlaps with Zone 1). If your tram trip is entirely in Zone 2 you must touch on and touch off to get the lower Zone 2 fare, otherwise there is no need to touch off on a tram.” Source: http://ptv.vic.gov.au/tickets/myki/touching-on-and-off/
27. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Source: http://ptv.vic.gov.au/tickets/myki/touching-on-and-off/
28. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Aha! Slow card readers, eh?
29. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Original budget $340m. $1.55B later… (2016) Source: https://sites.google.com/site/cheaperthanmyki/home (archive here) Space shuttle launch (2011) $426 million Mars Rover mission (2007) $777 million Value of London Stansted Airport (2012) $1.5 billion Total assets of Ford Motor Company, Australia (2011) $1.5 billion
30. ©2020 Andrew Polaine How major shifts at the top level of zoom affect all the details.
31. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Image by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash Smallest level of zoom
32. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Image by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash Big level of zoom
33. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Human level of zoom
34. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Photo by hello-i-m-nik on Unsplash
35. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash
36. ©2020 Andrew Polaine How do you boil the ocean? Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw on Unsplash
37. ©2020 Andrew Polaine How do you boil the ocean? One cup at a time Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash
38. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Donella Meadows “A small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. “Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don’t count the costs — among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, etc. — the whole list of problems we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, much different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth. “The world’s leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they’re pushing with all their might in the wrong direction.” Source: http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
39. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Graphic: CC licensed by Toby Morris in collaboration with Siouxsie Wiles and published by The Spinoff
40. Source: http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ Places To Intervene In A System (in increasing order of effectiveness) 12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards). 11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows. 10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures). 9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change. 8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against. 7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops. 6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information). 5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints). 4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure. 3. The goals of the system. 2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises. 1. The power to transcend paradigms. —Donella Meadows ©2020 Andrew Polaine
41. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Activity Semantic zoom
42. Jon Kolko’s Semantic Zoom ©2020 Andrew Polaine 0 Product -1 oduct Line r Brand +1 Feature or Function +2 Control o UI Eleme Kolko, J. (2011). Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis. New York: Oxford University Press.
43. ©2020 Andrew Polaine 0 Product -3 Global, World -2 Company or Marketplace -1 Product Line or Brand +1 Feature or Function +2 Control or UI Element +3 Attribute or Detail Figure 7.19 Display of all seven of the concept map zoom levels. Jon Kolko’s Semantic Zoom Kolko, J. (2011). Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis. New York: Oxford University Press.
44. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Time to hit the MURAL
45. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Activity 1.In your breakout rooms and in MURAL, explore your assigned zoom level. 2.Sticky note everything you can think of at that level. Be careful, it’s easy to slip into a higher or lower zoom level. 3.Afterwards, we’ll all take a look at how much (or little) complexity we’ve explored. 5 minutes
46. ©2020 Andrew Polaine Thank You! Web: polaine.com Twitter: @apolaine Podcast: pln.me/p10 Newsletter: pln.me/nws