Unleashing the Potential of AcciMap in Identifying and Anticipating Systemic Failures: A Case Study of Child Abuse Prevention through Design

Abstract

This study proposes a new application of AcciMap, a tool initially created within safety science. AcciMap assists designers by identifying and anticipating systemic conditions that have contributed to prior failures and may influence the implementation of new design interventions. For validation, we applied AcciMap to analyze factors contributing to child abuse cases in South Korea. This process identified potential facilitators and barriers related to the implementation of a child abuse assessment checklist developed by the research team. We found that AcciMap enables designers to apply systems thinking to complex problems. It allows the consideration of potential implementation issues for new design interventions across multiple levels, helping designers understand and anticipate the complex systemic structures affecting their intervention. By exploring how AcciMap can be used for in-depth sociotechnical system analysis, this study contributes to advancing our understanding of systemic design.