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

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

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Listen to the puppet, you should.
Image © Lucasfilm/Disney

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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/

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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/

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VC funding, user
focus and scale
Photo by Lucian Alexe on Unsplash

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Excessive
growth has
consequences
Photo by Damir Spanic on Unsplash

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This is related to…
Photo by Wolfgang Mennel on Unsplash

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… this, which is
related to…
Photo by Antoine Giret on Unsplash

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Photo by Sifan Liu on Unsplash
… this, which is
related to…

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Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash
… this, which is
related to…

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Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
…this.
And on and on it goes.

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Photo by Charles on Unsplash
No interface works without an
ecosystem and few “products”
are standalone these days.
It’s not complicated.
It’s complex.
Designing for complexity
means designing for the
detail and the big picture
simultaneously.

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Sometimes you
need to boil the
ocean.
Photo by Ricardo Resende on Unsplash

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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

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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

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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.”

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Money, borders, laws, markets, norms
— all these things that feel so concrete
and fixed were once designed.
This means they can be
re-designed.

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02.
Some examples

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How disconnected
touchpoints can wreck an
ecosystem

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Hi Myki! You look cool.
Just touch on and off
then, yeah?

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Oh, okay.

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How about
swiping it?
No?

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Wave it in
front? No?

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Sorry, I can’t quite
read that in time.

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Maybe the machine
will help. Oh dear.

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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/

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Source: http://ptv.vic.gov.au/tickets/myki/touching-on-and-off/

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Aha! Slow
card readers,
eh?

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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

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How major shifts at the top
level of zoom affect all the
details.

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Image by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash
Smallest level
of zoom

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Image by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash
Big level of
zoom

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Human level
of zoom

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Photo by hello-i-m-nik on Unsplash

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Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash

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How do you
boil the ocean?
Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw on Unsplash

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How do you boil
the ocean?
One cup at a time
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

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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/

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Graphic: CC licensed by Toby Morris in collaboration with Siouxsie Wiles and published by The Spinoff

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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

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Activity
Semantic zoom

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Jon Kolko’s Semantic Zoom
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.

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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.

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Time to hit the MURAL

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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

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Thank You!
Web: polaine.com
Twitter: @apolaine
Podcast: pln.me/p10
Newsletter: pln.me/nws

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

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

Andy Polaine

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