Our Theories of Theories of Change: The Social Construction of Transformation

Peter Jones Governance, Social Systems Design, Systemic Design, Transformation Design

Theories of Change (ToC) are well-known in changemaking initiatives and program evaluation as structural models that represent the expected enactment of proposed change programs. They are logic models that portray proof of process that present the sequences of action and the desired outcomes to justify systems change programs. With a research collaborator Ryan Murphy (PhD student, OCAD SFI alum) we have been tracing an emerging research agenda this year to explore the systems theory basis for theories of change. We are starting with critiques of the formalist logic models used in change programs to define claims of social causality from proposed action plans and aim to design systemic approaches to improve visual narration, systems logics, and reliability. See: Murphy, R. & Jones, P. (2020). Systemic Strategy: Systemic Design Methods for Complex Systems Change. RSD9 Symposium, NID Ahmedabad, India. Murphy, R. and Jones, P. (2020). Design management for wicked problems: Towards …

Navigating the Complexity of Cancer Diagnosis

Peter Jones Co-Creation, Design for Care, Systemic Design

A team from OCAD University’s Health Design Studio [1] designed a series of synthesis maps for the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer to map and propose systemic responses to the clinical and social complexity of cancer pre-diagnosis in Canadian care provision. In the two synthesis maps presented here, we represented clinical diagnostic processes and the patient experiences associated with navigating the complexity of cancer diagnosis for three cancer sites, across three (representing 6) geographical regions. The maps were constructed in an iterative design and research process by the OCAD team as part of a larger CPAC collaboration to identify evidence-based opportunities for system-level change in cancer diagnosis to improve patient experience and clinical practices. The maps present an integration of current knowledge from clinical practice and patient experiences drawn directly from interviews and workshops with patient advisors, primary care physicians and cancer specialists. The maps are available directly from CPAC on …

Rethinking Design / Systems / Thinking

Peter Jones Design Management, Sensemaking, Systemic Design

The design community is once again rethinking all the thinkings. It’s about time, as we’ve been through more than a decade after the last global crash and we are now at the start of the next, much longer crash, or the Long Crisis of the Anthropocene. This crash will be political, cultural and financial (unlike the 2008 Minsky Moment (credit implosion) based on the corrupt underpinnings of mortgage-backed securities). Will the design community and design education be prepared this time? Or will we be arguing about ideology and single-cause design activism? Perhaps the compelling ideas of the prior decade are fuzzy by now, but we were busy bringing new design-led interdisciplines into schools and defying the complaints of those that insisted “design education must change.” It was changing – and now we’ve seen several hundred graduates from the OCAD University Strategic Foresight & Innovation MDes. We saw the rise and …

Systems Change for New(s) Media

Peter Jones Civil media, Media Ecology, Systemic Design

(First posted on Medium) We have credible understanding to suggest that news media, and the journalism supposedly informing the news, no longer contributes to a meaningful shared public reality. With the arrest of Julian Assange, and Big Media’s denouncement of him as a publisher/journalist and as a person, society suffers another major blow from officialdom in the ongoing struggle to locate responsibility in public reporting. Assange built Wikileaks into a self-organizing publishing system, the newsroom of the future. If Western media actually cared about access to truth via “certified authentic documents” there might be less distrust of the content, process, and intentions of news organizations. But instead, when the Guardian (of all outlets) and New York Times actually cheer on the framing and takedown of an influential independent publisher, who has arguably put his life on the line, it serves the function of a political gang hit on a rival …