Reflections

Systems Sight wasn’t so much a phase, as a mindset, a set of methods, and a framework for navigating and thinking about the nuance of the sector.

What it made clear was that practice which suggests we ‘isolate problems’, and draw a boundary around the scope of a project is deeply problematic when it comes to the interconnectivity and emergent properties of systems.

I feel like the use of multiple methods for generating observations and insight, multiple methods for attempting to correlate and synthesise meaning, and recognise myself as a design embedded within the system rather than observing from the outside, were all vital to the development of a foundational story about the system and opportunities for intentional influence.

I believe there’s a huge opportunity for using digital tools for arranging research in two significantly different ways:

1. Synthesis mapping with embedded research - taking the map at the heart of the Story of System further, to include qualitative and quantitative data (or links to other sources).

2. Research libraries - making insights more atomic, and storing them as databases instead of artefacts (inspired by Polaris).