FBTB 2024: Sheryl Cababa - Participatory Design and Systems Thinking: So Happy Together

Researcher & Strategist
Sheryl Cababa is the author of Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers. She's a design researcher and strategist and is the Chief Strategy Officer at Optimistic Design, an education-focused research, insights, and development studio based in Seattle.

Participatory Design and Systems Thinking: So Happy Together
In this talk, I will discuss how to combine participatory design with systems thinking. As a design leader, you will learn techniques and methods to not only broaden your analysis through systems thinking but also learn about fun and engaging forms of participatory design to bring your stakeholders and end users into the design process.

For designers and design leaders working on complex systems and products, systems thinking is a necessary addition to your toolbox. As powerful as systems thinking is, sometimes it feels too abstract and not as human or empathic as it could be, especially for designers.

Participatory design – involving your end users and stakeholders in the design process – is a way of bringing life into your design thinking and systems thinking practice. In Toward a System of System Methodologies, Michael C. Jackson describes this type of involvement as “the participative principle”:

“If possible, all the stakeholders should participate in the various phases of the planning process... the stakeholders participate in designing an ‘idealised future’ for the system with which they are concerned.”