Abstract
The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it seeks to use a practical real-world example to demonstrate the power of a systems thinking perspective in design, and more specifically in the design of services. It makes use of the paradigm of e-accessibility, in the application domain of publicly available self-services. Secondly, the benefits of this perspective will be discussed, through some theoretical tenets of systems thinking, such as the use of emerging properties, the law of requisite variety and notions of second order cybernetics, in terms of the richness that they offer to the conceptualisation and praxis of design in general, and service design in particular. Finally, we speculate on the implications of systems thinking to question the nature of the interdisciplinarity and even transdisciplinarity of design.
Highlights
We are witnessing a renewed interest and appreciation of systems thinking in a range of domains, such as biology, law, social sciences, pychology, engineering and management
This paper is structured as follows: we present a background to systems thinking, as well as to service design and self-services with the attendant issues raised by considerations of e-accessibility
Following the classification of Spohrer et al (2010), we can enumerate self-services located within a) systems that move, store and process, where we find self-services established in systems for transportation, waste recycling, food and product distribution; b) services that are connected with health, education, finance, tourism, retail and leisure and c) services that govern and serve the public, such as self-service in filling in tax returns online, obtaining and renewing official documents getting information, etc
Summary
We are witnessing a renewed interest and appreciation of systems thinking in a range of domains, such as biology, law, social sciences, pychology, engineering and management. For design, there is an emergent interest in the potential of systems thinking approaches to support the theory and praxis of design, as evidenced by the recent work of design researchers (e.g; Jonas, 2007, 2011; Valtonen, 2010; Sevaldson, 2010a, 2010b; Liem, 2012; Riis, 2013). Each group of stakeholders involved has its own set of needs and constraints, leading to greater and greater complexity This calls for a wider definition of design and its role. The living organisms are, as far their organisation is concerned, closed systems, while at the same time, as far as their energy is concerned, they are open, with incoming and outgoing energy and matter That is, they are not ‘idle’ or ‘immobilized’ in their immediate surroundings, and are studied as a total entity. They present www.FORMakademisk.org emergent properties, which cannot be deduced from their component parts (von Bertanlanffy, 1974)
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