Systems Thinking
How Systems Thinkers are the Modern Polymaths of Outer Space Design
I've noticed that engineers created the term “systems thinking” as a way to formalize a practice of holistic thinking and includes concepts generally omitted from engineering such as the social, aesthetic, and cultural implications of space missions. The idea comes from the technical "systems engineering" field of engineering managment which organizes the process from idea to execution. On the other hand, the social sciences seem to prefer the concept of “polymath” and most polymathic people have a strong background in the arts that simultaneously evolves with their engineering knowledge.At my time working at aerospace startup Orbit Fab the concept of "systems thinking" was always held with high regard. We are constantly looking for people who thrive in the startup environment and could wear many hats integrating marketing, business, and engineering together.
In Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics beyond Earth sociologist and ethnographer Valerie Olson looks at NASA missions and how designers and engineers collaborated on them. In Chapter 7: Transhabitation she says people she spoke to at NASA share my interest in the concept of “systems engineering” as exemplified by design thinking, saying that:
“For the folks that go through engineering school, the mentality is all about optimizing the design. . . . And that’s not always the right solution, because it needs to be an integrated solution that balances both psychological and physical environments so that you give them the best environment in which they have to live and work. . . . We [architects and designers] make pretty good systems engineers because we’re not trained as a systems engineer” (Olson).
The traditional space "systems engineering" framework goes as such: engineers develop concepts, requirements, detailed design, implementation, integration, verification, and deployment.
Systems Thinking and Systems Engineering are not the same, systems thinking being a set of holistic thought processes that can be applied to improve the practical execution of systems engineering.
Clearly definitions of "systems thinking" are broad. What's more, designers have a similar framework. IDEO and Stanford d.school's "design thinking" process, now adapted for product development and many fields of design, follows the divergent-convergent (also known as focus-flare) process of Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test."Systems Thinking has been characterized as a perspective, a language, and a set of tools. It is a holistic perspective that acknowledges that the relationships among system component [and] are as important as the components themselves. Systems Thinking tools include the Iceberg model which posits that, in systems, repeated events and patterns (which are observable) are caused by structure (stocks, flows, and feedback loops), which are, in turn, caused by underlying forces such as mental models, gravity, and electromagnetism. Additional Systems Thinking tools include causal loop diagrams, behavior-over-time plots, stock-and-flow diagrams, systemic root cause analysis, dynamic modeling tools, and archetypes.
Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the development of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, and then proceeding with design, synthesis, validation, deployment, maintenance, evolution and eventual disposal of a system, integrating a wide range of engineering disciplines. [...] It takes into account both the business and technical needs of all customers with the goal of providing a quality product that meets the needs of all users" (Monat et all).
Business Innovation Design wrote on "Systems Thinking is the New Design Thinking" praises design thinking for it's way to formalize designer thought processes and yield innovative ideas such as IKEA's showroom, AirBnB's structure, Ministry of Manpower's (Singapore) onboarding process, kid-friendly MRI machines and more. However, it critiques design thinking as stopping after a successful prototype and its "lack of continuity and integration inside the organization’s system, not placing the solution with the right system to manage change."
Enter systems thinking - the approach beyond design thinking. Systems thinking is an approach to understand, design, systemize the flow of value from various aspects of the organization across the value chain to ensure synchronicity, consistency, integration, and maximization between people, activities, processes, policies, places and resources. Systems thinking is easily understood and expressed through big-picture and detailed visualization.
What is the difference between design thinking and systems thinking? Design thinking is meant to innovate new solutions based on "bottom-up" human-centered approach. Systems thinking is meant to manage change and integration based on “top-down” big picture view. Systems thinking approach complements with design thinking, instead of replacing it altogether. After all, implementing design thinking requires designing the system itself.
Systems engineering, but not necessarily systems thinking, is present in almost all space mission project due to the sheer amount of components that need to be managed especially for human spaceflight.
"A middle-aged female industrial designer, and former JSC TransHab contractor comments:
So, [the] whole idea of looking at a project holistically, it sounds New Age and it’s been overused, but I now use the word systems engineering, because having read my Smith and my Mill and my Marx and my Hegel, and my Durkheim and my Hannah Arendt and my Foucault, [I know] that economics, actually economy, is not a separate thing from ecology. It’s all the exchange of energy. . . .What I’ve learned in spacecraft design is, if you optimize one system, chances are you’re creating problems for the rest of the spacecraft. Every system has its own rules, but those rules only function fully in internal interactions. External interactions have to follow different rules, and that involves cooperation with the systems with which they’re interacting. Economics in considering itself an independent entity is destroying a lot of the systems it’s touching, because of that break, that fallacy in thought" (Olson).
What this designer is touching on is that when we are solving for a problem we are often faced with technical contradictions. Whereby we see that making something lighter reduces it's strength or one of numbers of factors like productivity, automation, manufacturability, weight, ease of operation, complexity, reliability, speed, power etc etc.
This idea is the basis for TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) -- ТРИЗ (Tеория решения изобретательских задач). It's an international system of solving technical contradictions developed and popularized in the U.S.S.R. between 1946 and 1985, by engineer/scientist Genrich S. Altshuller and colleagues.
Altshuller spent his early career in a patent office where he studied 200,000 patents to look for patterns in breakthrough inventions. He realized that there were certain patterns among all the problem solving examples. Categorizing and learning to apply those patterns would replace trial-and-error and brainstorming methods that take very long amounts of time to generate any innovations. He found out you can train people in specific "roundabout ways of thinking" that can expedite and almost predict those eureka moments.
He then formulated 40 core principles (http://www.triz40.com/aff_Principles_TRIZ.php), which are applied in places where you need to solve these technical contradictions. There are other ideas that tie all this together like the concept of visualizing an "ideal system" and "utilizing idle/available resources", and many real-world examples.
For example consider creation of the T-Drill product. How might you make connecting two pipes more efficient? Previously the clear solution was to use a T fitting (think back to how you might connect 2 PVC pipes at home). Instead, T-Drill removed the need for T-fittings on pipes by creating a tool that extrudes the material in the longer pipe up to accept the shorter pipe--using the TRIZ principle of "utilizing available resources--the pipe material itself"
I spoke to TRIZ master Zinovy Royzen who leads TRIZ consulting, taught classes at UCLA extension, and solved problems for the giants like NASA, Lockheed, Boeing to name a few. TRIZ seemingly vanished from the public eye as the Soviet Union fell apart and most TRIZ experts immigrated to other countries. But now there has been a ressurgent interest in it evidenced by many classes popping up and the existence of the Altshuller Institute for TRIZ studies https://www.aitriz.org/ Today, Zinovy continues to work on the framework, dubbing his version TOP-TRIZ (Tool-Object-Product TRIZ), and creating a complementary software that helps you break down and diagnose what type of contradiction you have and what methods you can use to solve it. He has a plethora of examples for how the process solved challenges that previously stumped engineers, and credits TRIZ for the Boeing 777x folding tips solution.
All of these methodologies of problem solving recognize the need for looking at problems holistically from many angles + applying a framework that helps guide thinking to efficiently solve a very complicated problem. And space is a particularly complicated problem. Not only does it require great technical innovation, but it also requires great process innovation as systems thinking, design thinking, and concepts like TRIZ can work hand in hand and find ways to play well together in the education of engineers and designers.
