ITRL paper presented at Design Thinking Research Symposium 13
Industrial PhD student Lina Rylander presented Designing for change in complex socio-technical systems at a conference in Israel.
At the end of March, industrial PhD student Lina Rylander visited Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, for the conference Design Thinking Research Symposium 13. The conference theme was about expanding what is understood as design (and design thinking), and Lina was there to present her paper Designing for change in complex socio-technical systems that she wrote together with her supervisor Magnus Eneberg. The background to the paper is that societal challenges have created a need to handle transformations of complex socio-technical systems. One example is the transportation system, and electric and autonomous vehicles are considered possible innovations in shifting toward sustainability. The paper demonstrates how design (and design thinking) may support system transformation and transition. It also describes the change in the designer’s role when designers apply methods from the system thinking field, which shifts the aim of the designer’s role; from working interdisciplinary aiming to understand stakeholders to being part of transdisciplinary work where the designer becomes a stakeholder. So, who is a designer, and what is design when the designer becomes an agent in complex socio-technical systems?