Cancer Screening Pathways for Indigenous Communities

Peter Jones Design for Care, Health design

In healthcare design, many projects are done over stages of study, proto-construction, and longer/deeper feedback cycles than in private sector or commercial projects. One of our OCADU Health Design collaborative design projects, with Cancer Care Ontario (CCO), initiated pre-Covid and after some time in reviews, was recently completed and distributed to stakeholders. The First Nations Cancer Screening Access Guides were designed in collaboration with Laura Senese, senior researcher with Cancer Care Ontario, working with PI Dr. Jill Tinmouth with Sunnybrook Research Institute. The Access Guide, a bespoke product for the Wequedong Lodge, was finalized and recently printed in English, French, Ojibway and Oji-Cree language versions. The baseline English version we designed (with the ideas and design work from several research assistants) was created as a concise, vernacular, culturally-relevant guideline for First Nations use across Ontario. While in principle the design of a health communication artifact is a straightforward process of …

Metaplanning with Design Journeys

Peter Jones Co-Creation, Social Systems Design, Systemic Design, Systems Thinking

The Journeys are staged to help the organising team separate the goals of each stage of learning, and to structure the participation for stakeholders in a clearly defined way, with a definitive logic. The Journeys design approach is all pre-development (or implementation) and can be understood as a complete metaplanning[1] and strategic design planning process, but for complex social systems and system change intervention. A participatory design style is essential to system metaplanning because the planners will be the stakeholders and risk-bearers, those with skin-in-the-game, who will be responsible for implementation.  Therefore it’s critical they understand every step of the design planning journey. Real stakeholders invested in the outcome might be very different than the convenience-sample groups that we drum up for organizational workshops, or in the public sector invitational sessions we often convene. The five-sided figure shows a model for stakeholder sampling, based on Alexander Christakis – who defined …

Bounce Beyond – The Next Economies are Ecological

Peter Jones Cultural innovation, Ecological economics, Social Systems Design

The mission of Bounce Beyond is to accelerate initiatives working to make regenerative, life-centered economies realizable at scale through examples of “next economies” communities. We call these Collaborating Next Economies Communities in Transformation (CoNECTs). Bounce Beyond is an action and learning community of CoNECTs and people with deep transformations experience. We currently sponsor and support four CoNECTs. Bioregional localization programs (e.g. South Devon Fibreshed) Emerging ecological economies (e.g. Doughnut economy projects) Industry groups (Seafood 2030) and sectors (European Healthcare) planning for systems change Large-scale SDG initiatives, at the national or regional level Our mission is to demonstrate the potential to make life-centered economies realizable at scale through exemplars of “next economies” communities. Believing that the conventional economy is a key driver of the crises we are now facing and that responding to people’s pressing need for livelihoods in ways that address the crises is critical, Bounce Beyond focuses on connecting …

Handbook of Systems Sciences

Peter Jones Cybernetics, Systemic Design, Systems Thinking

A Massive Tome – Too Big for Home? The Springer Handbook of Systems Sciences, at nearly 1500 pages, isn’t the desk reference for everybody. Today the major science publishing platforms provide references and edited books as independent, searchable chapters, so a web search should find most of these. The Handbook has 9 sections and 49 chapters, ranging from systemic design. The Handbook included mainly what I would call second and third generation systems science. The volume is co-edited by two past-presidents of ISSS, and maybe 7 others wrote chapters, as well as Michael Lissack, recent president of ASC. Unlike an Encyclopedia, the Handbook did not aim to index the field or update the popular topics in systems thinking. These are largely works from 21st century systems theory, relevant to applied research and practice. The section areas included: Systems modeling and methodology Management and organizations Systems practice Complex systems modeling Systems …