IDEMC: Design for Complexity

Design for Complexity

Using systems and transition thinking in design

Designers are increasingly involved in design initiatives that contribute to tackling complex societal challenges, related to domains such as health & wellbeing, safety, sustainability, and inequality. While designers have unique skills and expertise to contribute to this context, it also requires new design approaches, such as ‘systemic design’ and ‘transition design’.

Curriculum

In this master class you will learn to refine your skills to design for complex societal challenges; by combining the distinctive strengths of designers to frame problems, humanise challenges, and learn through experimentation, with principles and practices from systems thinking, complexity and transition theory.

You will participate in various hands-on activities to explore what it means to perceive the world systemically, and apply novel and practical systemic design principles and methods to a complex design case. You will also learn about the theoretical background of those practices and principles. Together we will reflect on the role of designers who aim to contribute to making our complex world a better place, and their position working within or alongside public, social, and/or private sector organisations.

Learning Objectives

You will learn to:

• Recognise systemic ways of looking at the world and its challenges using perspectives from systems thinking, complexity and transition thinking;
• Distinguish different types of complex problem contexts and recognise when it is appropriate to apply designerly practices;
• Apply design principles for complex societal challenges that build on the unique strength of designers to ‘humanise’ systems;
• Apply methods and practices to design for and explore complex challenges systemically to a specific design case;
• Reflect on the role of designers in the context of complex challenges and societal transitions.

Speakers

Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer is Associate Professor in Design for Social Innovation at IDE. She is interested in how designers collaborate with other disciplines and professions to tackle complex societal challenges. She gained expertise in design, social innovation, transdisciplinarity and systems thinking, while working in academic positions in Australia and the Netherlands, and collaborating with an international network of social and public innovation practioners.

Jotte de Koning is an Assistant Professor of Design and Sustainability at IDE, TU Delft. Her expertise lies in the field of transitions and sustainability. Her research is focused on co-creation processes between different actors in the transition process. She explores how methods from the field of Participatory Design and approaches of Design thinking are relevant for different stakeholders in sustainability transitions.

Nynke Tromp works as an assitant professor Social Design & Behaviour Change at the department of Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology. Tromp’s main aim is to understand what designers can bring to table in the light of complex societal issues. On the one hand, she focuses on the artefact (i.e., the product, service, programme or system) and its capacity to shape people’s behaviour. She studies how designers can use this power to foster desired societal transitions. On the other hand, she focuses on design thinking and methodology, and more particularly integrative thinking and reframing, as valuable skills in face of complexity.

Registration: https://www.tudelft.nl/io/studeren/ide-design-master-classes/registration/

Website: https://www.tudelft.nl/io/studeren/ide-design-master-classes/design-for-complexity