Systemic co-design

Systemic design diagram
Systemic design: Integrating the mindsets and toolsets of systems thinking and design thinking to encourage innovative systems change

Collaborative, multi-stakeholder processes are vital for tackling complex societal challenges, but they require careful design to ensure lasting impact. Unlike the planning for a single meeting or workshop, systemic co-design involves flexible, iterative processes that can span months or even years. These processes need to accommodate emergent learning while offering a clear sense of direction, ensuring that stakeholders can collectively navigate towards desired outcomes.

Systemic design, often referred to as co-design, differs from traditional service or experience design in its scale and complexity. It focuses on higher-order social systems composed of interconnected subsystems and diverse stakeholders, such as public health, agriculture, climate change, and biodiversity conservation. By blending systems thinking with design thinking, systemic design brings human-centred approaches to complex, multi-stakeholder challenges.

This approach leverages tools and methods from both disciplines – including mapping, visualisation, and generative research – to reimagine and transform services and systems. The emphasis is on collaboration and innovation, creating pathways for shared understanding, co-creation, and meaningful change.

For a foundational understanding, start with this introduction to systems thinking and systemic design, which outlines how these approaches can support decision-making in dynamic environments. Below, several recent publications and websites have contributed to locating systemic design as a social-centred systems-oriented design practice, such as the ones set out below:


Beyond Net Zero: A Systemic Design Framework | Design Council

The Design Council’s Systemic Design Framework, released in 2021, represents the culmination of years of thinking about the evolving role of design. Moving beyond product development, this framework is designed to help policymakers and agencies tackle complex, multi-disciplinary challenges. It places people and the planet at the centre of design activities and offers valuable guidelines for designers addressing systemic issues. Notably, the framework emphasises the need for regenerative and decolonising approaches, highlighting often-overlooked aspects such as leadership and storytelling. These elements are crucial for addressing the deeper social dimensions of complex challenges. For an accessible overview, Cat Drew’s article – Developing our new Systemic Design Framework – provides a concise introduction to the framework’s principles and origins, along with its broader backstory.


Systemic Design Practice Wheel
The Systemic Design Practice Wheel,  developed by Emma Blomkamp, helps practitioners address complex challenges through creative and participatory approaches. It draws on research, evaluation, education, and practice in public and social innovation, focusing on five key domains: principles, place, people, process, and practice. These “5 Ps” guide engagement with communities and stakeholders, integrating systems thinking, human-centred design, and participatory design to foster meaningful social change.


Systemic Design Toolkit Guide
The systemic design toolkit created by Kristel Van Ael, Philippe Vandenbroeck, Alex Ryan, & Peter Jones provides practical tools for systemic transformation through co-creation sessions. It includes eight adaptable techniques—such as framing the system, exploring possibility spaces, and fostering transitions—designed to combine systems thinking and design thinking. The toolkit supports collaborative processes that can be tailored to various contexts and challenges.


Follow the Rabbit: A Field Guide to Systemic Design
Roya Damabi’s Follow the Rabbit: A Field Guide to Systemic Design (2017) is a practical resource for systemic designers with a basic understanding of the field. It walks readers through the systemic design process, from concept to implementation, with advice on workshop planning, role definition, and client engagement. The guide also features an FAQ section to help introduce systemic design concepts to new audiences.


The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design
This 2015 field guide  from IDEO reminds us that human-centered design isn’t a perfectly linear process, and each project invariably has its own contours and character. But no matter what kind of design challenge you’ve got, the authors suggest that you’ll move through three main phases: Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation. By taking these three phases in turn, you’ll build deep empathy with the communities and individuals you’re designing for; you’ll figure out how to turn what you’ve learned into a chance to design a new solution; and you’ll build and test your ideas before finally putting them out into the world. In the Field Guide, the IDEO team share their philosophy of design and the seven mindsets that underpin their work: Empathy, Optimism, Iteration, Creative Confidence, Making, Embracing Ambiguity, and Learning from Failure.


Whole in one: Designing for empathy in complex systems
This 2017 paper by Helena Sustar and Tuuliu Maki investigates the role of empathy and the use of service design tools in the context of (governmental) systems and organisational services. They propose that  – rather than dealing with emotions and mental states –  the empathic design approach aims to assist and scaffold people in a system, to understand how the system works from another perspective and to reflect their own viewpoints on a better whole. The paper also examines existing systemic and empathic design tools through which empathy is applied in design processes.


Systems Approaches to Public Sector Challenges – Working with Change
This 2017 report, produced by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, explores how systems approaches can be used in the public sector to solve complex or “wicked” problems . Consisting of three parts, the report discusses the need for systems thinking in the public sector; identifies tactics that can be employed by government agencies to work towards systems change; and provides an in-depth examination of how systems approaches have been applied in practice.


Beyond sticky notes: what is co-design?
This page by Kelly Ann McKercher provides a good overview of what co-design is, and an introduction to her book –  Beyond Sticky Notes.  Packed full of useful tips, clear diagrams, and practical frameworks, the book (and the website) will help you lead collaborative design work, and genuinely share power. A useful book for new and experienced practitioners alike, Beyond Sticky Notes is a definitive guide to the mindsets, methods, practices of care, and social movements of co-design. Kelly Ann McKercher also shares her useful Co-design Planning-Tool Template which provides a one page overview and prompt questions covering several key facets of co-design.


A framework for systemic design. This 2014 paper by Alex Ryan  presents a framework for systemic design as a mindset, methodology, and set of methods that together enable teams to learn, innovate, and adapt to a complex and dynamic environment. The author proposes a systemic design methodology composed of six main activities: framing, formulating, generating, reflecting, inquiring, and facilitating. In this view systemic design methods are seen as a flexible and open-ended set of procedures for facilitating group collaboration that are both systemic and designerly.


Systemic design principles for complex social systems
Peter Jones’s 2014 preprint paper explores the shared principles of systems theory and design thinking, both of which aim to create well-reasoned, high-impact changes in complex situations. Systems thinking emphasises understanding problems in their broader context, often with an analytical bias, while design thinking focuses on action-oriented, creative solutions, sometimes overlooking deeper systemic insights. This work bridges these approaches, highlighting principles applicable to social, organisational, and service systems as well as product and information design. For further exploration, see Jones’s companion paper- Design Research Methods in Systemic Design (2014).


Integrating systems thinking and design thinking
This web paper by John Pourdehnad, Erica Wexler and Dennis Wilson usefully links systems thinking and design thinking. They acknowledge that the two approaches complement each other and each incorporates components of the other implicitly. Importantly, they remind us that the most valuable principle that systems thinking can add to design thinking is the need to bring the whole system to the discussion from the beginning. The stakeholders within the system must plan for themselves. If problem formulation is the first step in the design process, then adopting a systems mindset can help with framing and especially reframing the problems.


Schön: Design as a reflective practice.
This 2011 paper by Willemien Visser presents Schön’s approach to design. For Schön, design was one of a series of activities in domains that involve reflective practice: City planning, engineering, management, and law, but also education, psychotherapy, and medicine. As he says it, “the designer constructs the design world within which he/she sets the dimensions of his/her problem space, and invents the moves by which he/she attempts to find solutions.


Lessons learned – Why the failure of systems thinking should inform the future of design thinking
Fred Collopy’s 2009 Fast Company blog highlights the lessons design thinking can draw from the challenges faced by systems thinking. Pioneers like Russell Ackoff, C. West Churchman, and Peter Checkland demonstrated how systems thinking incorporates principles such as stakeholder engagement, reframing problems, scenario exploration, and iterative processes. However, its academic framing often hindered adoption by managers. Collopy cautions against similar over-definition in design thinking, emphasising the need to keep it accessible and practical for broader uptake.


Concept & Systems Learning for Design
CSL4D is an informal, private initiative by Sjon van ’t Hof. He has developed this wordpress site and blog for exploring the combined use of concept mapping and systems thinking for learning in business, development, and education.


Adopt-Adapt-Expand-Respond: a framework for managing and measuring systemic change processes. As Daniel Nippard, and colleagues remind us, those who implement them are tasked with ‘facilitating systemic change’ – but what does the term ‘systemic change’ means – and the ‘facilitation’ implicit in its implementation – is often not clearly defined. This Briefing Paper formally introduces this framework as one contribution to  promoting greater precision in how practitioners and funders understand and operationalise ‘systemic change’.


Systemic Design eXchange
SDX is an Edmonton-based community of practice that convenes individuals interested in learning about Systemic Design as a methodology for addressing complex, real world issues. With a bias towards learning by doing, SDX aims to be a watering hole where multiple sectors can come together, learn together, and act together. Together, SDX explores systems thinking, design thinking, and change lab approaches.


Presentations


Framing design as conversations about systems
This 2016 presentation by Hugh Dubberly outlines how design has evolved to address and work with complexity.  Design and thinking in terms of whole systems means thinking about relationships, continuous change and feedback loops.


Systemic design: Systems as a theory for complex design.
A 2015 slideshare presentation by Peter Jones. Covers new approaches to design thinking, design methods and principles.


Towards a Systemic Design Toolkit: A Practical Workshop
A 2016 slideshare presentation by Koen Peters. Provides an introduction to a systemic design toolkit, along with underlying principles. It then provides an overview of the tools, and illustrates these using a case study example around managing child obesity.


More information on approaches, tools and methodologies related to systemic design can be found through the linked LfS pages  on systems thinking, design thinking and systems thinking tools. Other related pages point to resources on  related topics such as guides to help initiate and manage multi-stakeholder processesmanaging participation – including marginalized voices,  facilitation tools  and reflective practice. Allied topics include  supporting constructive practice changestrategic planning and scenario development.

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