Systems thinking to know yourself and others better with Boon Chew

Boon Chew: [00:00:00] I know some people who would struggle because there's just too much information to deal with but at the same time, if you allow yourself to get used to the fact that this eventually allows you to approach things in a more holistic way, in a more, measured way, it does start to pay back dividends eventually. It just takes a bit of effort and time.

Nirish Shakya: That's my good friend, Boon Chu. Boone is a principal UX designer at Elsevier, a publishing and analyst company, which you might have seen the name floating around in peer reviewed academic papers. Boone is also one of local leaders of the London chapter of the Interaction Design Association or I X D A, where he served on the board between 2015 and 2019.

In this episode, Boone and I dig into the world of systems thinking and how designers can use it to better understand the bigger system they're designing for. This conversation takes a pretty emergent approach as we talk [00:01:00] about how systems thinking can also help us understand ourselves and others. and facilitate better conversations. And that's because we're always forming systems in our heads to make sense of the world we live in. And sometimes those systems might not match someone else's. And just that awareness can help us empathize with others better. So keep listening. If you'd like to add systems thinking into your design toolkit.

Shivaun: This is the Design Feeling Podcast with your host Nirish Shakya. 

Nirish Shakya: Hello. My name is Nirish Shakya and I'm a human-centered designer, educator and coach. And this is a podcast for well, human-centered designers and innovators and problem solvers who tend to forget the human within the. The [00:02:00] conversations you'll hear will help you increase your self-awareness and creative confidence so that you can make the impact that gives you the joy and meaning that you seek.

Let's get started.

Boon Chew. Welcome to Design Feeling. It's great to finally have you on the show. After since we've been chatting for ages now, have you been?

Boon Chew: Yeah, well, we were chatting a little bit at your birthday party a few months back and I'd almost forgotten about that, that time. 

Nirish Shakya: We're having too much fun.

Boon Chew: I was having too much fun. So I was pleasantly pleased that you reached out to me to do this show. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.

Nirish Shakya: No, it was because I listened to your podcast interview that you did with with Rosenfeld. And like I, I just loved the way you talked about systems thinking in that show. So I wanted to just dig deeper. into that and maybe, put on more of a [00:03:00] self awareness angle into systems thinking and how maybe that can help us designers get a better sense of ourselves and the system that we're part of.

But before we get into the juicy details, Boond, Imagine that they made a movie out of your life.

Boon Chew: Oh god.

Nirish Shakya: How would that movie start? Describe that first scene for me.

Boon Chew: I don't know maybe a shot from my childhood?

Nirish Shakya: What's happening? What are you doing in that childhood scene?

Boon Chew: running around naked. I don't know. I have this kind of, I think there's, there's a this sort of persistent perception, there's a perception that life in Malaysia, I don't know, 40 years ago seemed a lot simpler than, than it is today. That things are today. And yeah, I guess, I guess they were, we, we could kind of run around when we were kids playing outside. [00:04:00] Running off to random stranger's places and, and, then being called back home in the evenings. So it, it, things used to be a bit more open. More carefree, maybe? I don't know what that means for how things are right now and my eventual journey into design. But I guess that's kind of a backdrop.

One of many backdrops, I suppose, you could use as an introduction to my

Nirish Shakya: hmm, but I guess, like, that's the, that's the system that we grew up in, right? Like where we had that like a sense of safety that we've lost, it?

Boon Chew: Yeah, things have certainly gotten a lot more complicated. I remember they certainly got a lot more complicated at the point where, at the transitions, at the transition points in our lives when we needed to go off to college or come [00:05:00] back to get a job. Those points were definitely key milestones where we were introduced to a whole bunch of Different things we weren't really prepared for before and would I don't think we would ever be able to be prepared for it either So I

Nirish Shakya: Hmm,

Boon Chew: yeah think I remember a point in time where I was just sitting around a dining table with a bunch of my dad's friends and we were comparing notes how Corporate life has changed so differently from the time of my father's era to ours.

It used to be that people would stay a long time at companies. They were certainly rewarded for loyalty and long service. And things are kind of the opposite right now. For a lot of people, I'm not saying it's... It's the, it's, it's everywhere. I'm certainly with a [00:06:00] company that rewards a long tenure and I've, passed the five, the five year mark now with, with my company, but it's pretty common to come across people who stay no more than two or three years at one place and then move on to the next thing. Either get booted out or just from, yeah, just from being bored

Nirish Shakya: yeah, yeah.

Boon Chew: or wanting a better pay or something.

Nirish Shakya: So,

Boon Chew: Yeah.

Nirish Shakya: Just like me, you also started out as a software developer, right? And then, how did you then go from being a developer to a designer?

Boon Chew: I always had an interest in design even when I was evaluating my work. The options for my first degree graphic design was one of those options. I eventually opted to do engineering, which I guess gave me a [00:07:00] much stronger technical background for the sort of work that we do as UX designers.

But yeah, I've always been interested in design. It was not until the time where I started working for an innovation department of a company. It was, it was BT that I worked for at the time I was, I was a part of the company that. Dealt with research and R& D. So, so basically taking tech, technologies that had intellectual property associated with them and build kind of fancy new software around it to showcase to various people in order to kind of.

From that get additional opportunities to, to do consulting work and things like that. So I got exposed to design through that route through the innovation route or value creation route. And it, it was obvious to me as an engineer, that making software up... [00:08:00] Just from out of, out of random, a random selection requirements did not seem to make sense.

Nirish Shakya: I can relate. I can 

Boon Chew: I just, I just, I'm just like,

Nirish Shakya: We've all been there, haven't we?

Boon Chew: Yeah, it can't be that easy. And like a lot of people I was I was looking around and Apple came up a lot of, why, why can't we make stuff like they do? I mean, I was just looking at their website, right? And their website isn't like the most amazing website in the world.

But at the time it was the 19, sorry, it was sort of the. I don't know mid 2000s 2007, around that time I'm not doing my math right. Anyway, it was a while back, but I was looking at the Apple website and like, okay, we, we, we, there, there's certainly be some, been some thinking that gone into, went into the making of this website.

And we were making websites. So we probably have a bit of think about like, how we go about making. [00:09:00]Websites. And I found out that this, this thing called user experience. I bought a bunch of books and all that. As one does yeah, that was basically the start of my story.

Nirish Shakya: Cool. Yeah, I mean, I always love hearing people's origin stories when it comes to how they got into design. And yeah, I can totally relate to this, this feeling of Yeah, not knowing, why you're even building the products you're building, like not being able to meet the people who actually, you know, who's going to use the products.

Because I had a similar story where I was just literally, blindly taking the requirements, coding and shipping and never questioning, like why?

Boon Chew: Yeah.

Nirish Shakya: And I remember this one time. We, we got a few complaints from customers saying, Oh, this button doesn't work, or I can't press this, or this doesn't make sense. And for us in the office, everything made sense. Like you [00:10:00] just press that, boom, done, right? Very easy. And the only conclusion we got to was that, Oh, these customers who are complaining must be stupid. So, I mean, back then I didn't know about, anything like user testing and things like that. So, but now, looking back, it's, it's, it's so clear, like, how the way I used to, build products was so flawed in terms of like not human centric at all.

Boon Chew: Mm hmm.

Nirish Shakya: But now, you, you, you've been in the game for quite a long time.

You have worked at agencies you did a pretty long gig at Sapient five years or so?

Boon Chew: No, more than that. Six and a half.

Nirish Shakya: and a half, yeah. Nice. So you, you like staying at companies for, quite a junky period of time.

Boon Chew: I have my reasons.

Nirish Shakya: Which what are, what are some of the reasons?

Boon Chew: Good support. I. Kind of like just getting stuck in [00:11:00] the work. I don't like to deal with all the externalities of that so And Sapient has a pretty good support infrastructure for people just to do what they get paid to do Yeah, so that kept me going for a while yeah, it's the same thing with my current company Yeah

Nirish Shakya: Nice. And then how did you get into this whole world of systems thinking?

Boon Chew: Yeah so that's a, that's a kind of like a separate journey on of its own. It is somewhat connected to my engineering and design backgrounds in a sense that I studied it as part of my formal education in my engineering program. There was a. A course called advanced control systems, which has to do with how you design and I guess diagnose or [00:12:00] engineer mechanistic systems or machine based systems that involve feedback loops and delays and stocks and flows kind of like Yeah.

With a lot of software that involves. All kinds of processing where you have inputs and outputs and all kinds of transformations happen to those things in between which made a lot of sense because then you can use that to that, that knowledge as you're designing all kinds of. Processes, flows things like that.

I later came across another aspect of systems thinking, again through my formal education, but this time through my HCI program, which at the time it was an elective that I, that I opted for called Organizational Informatics, and it had two components, one, was focusing on how do you design for [00:13:00] human computer situations that involve more than a single user.

So that makes it really interesting because we tend to think about designing for people on in front of screens, but we don't tend to think about conditions where there are more than one person involved in. Either a distributed system or otherwise but the other part of that course focused on really large groups, i.

e. organizations. So designing for organizations was something that that course through soft systems methodology was teaching. And that got me really interested in this. A whole new world about thinking about designing for systems that aren't involving screens. They don't have, so called devices that you have to design interactions for.

You're essentially designing interactions between people.

Nirish Shakya: designing for this

Boon Chew: So that was kind of mind blowing. [00:14:00] And then that always stuck with me for At the back of my mind, it informed my approach to design but somewhat at the periphery until a few years ago when I met a friend. I met this guy who was a systems thinking practitioner.

So all he does is systems thinking.

Nirish Shakya: And then you 

Boon Chew: I mean, I laugh, but you know, like, Oh, I met a guy. He says he's a UX designer. What's that? Yeah. So I met a systems practitioner. And I'm like, what's wow. I want to go meet this guy. And he lives down the road and I'll, we'll meet him for drinks. So it turns out that he does.

Almost all of his practice involving one core systems thinking tool, which is causal loop diagrams. I'm like, how do you do that? I mean, if you've been doing this for seven years and you're, you focus most of your consulting work around the use of causal loop diagrams.

And 

Nirish Shakya: more about these causal loop diagrams. I[00:15:00]

Boon Chew: so, I mean, in a simple sense. A causal loop diagram is a visual tool that has very specific syntax. And what I mean by syntax is that an arrow is intended to. Convey or communicate something very specific. It's much more specific than how we typically use arrows and boxes. Which, when we draw and sketch out on whiteboards, our arrows and boxes and circles and things like that.

We, we, we, there's a lot of subjectivity to them. Right, we, we, we. We don't tend to use arrows in a very kind of clinical sense, but with causal loop diagrams, because they are intended to be used and they are intended to communicate certain things in very specific ways. Every single element, every single visual element in the causal loop diagram expresses something very specific.

And what it, what it, how it's used is, is that it's intended to show [00:16:00] how An event or a situation or force or something affects some other thing by increasing its likelihood or decreasing its likelihood. And so you have the syntax of an arrow affecting the other thing and you have the the, the an indicator of a plus or a minus or something like that to indicate whether it increases the likelihood of something or decreases the likelihood of something else.

And when you start to, yeah, connect more and more and more of these things. Eventually, you start to see that some things connect back to each other, and that's where you have a loop, 

Nirish Shakya: All 

Boon Chew: that's where you start to see, like, holy cow, if we keep doing this, it's either gonna, gonna get better or worse, or we don't know, right?

But that's basically, it allows you to kind of diagnose.

Nirish Shakya: Do you have an example of this so that we can actually visualize this in our head in terms of a real life scenario?

Boon Chew: yeah, the, the, the, the, the most common example that people use. Is the idea of a thermostat, [00:17:00]right? The thermostat works on the basis that you've got a sensor that detects the current temperature. If it reaches a desired amount, it will turn off. The tap or the heat to, to prevent the heat from going higher than the desired amount.

When it starts to drop below a certain threshold, it turns the heat back on. It does this through these oscillating attempts, right? It goes up and down, up and down, up to a point where it seems to regulate itself to a pretty stable temperature. That's what... How thermostats work. And you can visualize that in the, in the causal loop diagram.

Nirish Shakya: Okay. 

Boon Chew: I'm not going to do it now, but that's,

I can probably search one,

search a causal loop diagram and show you how it looks

Nirish Shakya: Yeah, we'll probably, put a link to one of these diagrams in the show notes of the podcast, in the podcast app as well. So, yeah, if you're currently trying to figure out what it might look like, you can just, click on the [00:18:00]link wherever you're listening right now.

So having been introduced to systems thinking and having practiced it professionally how has that made you a better designer?

Boon Chew: So this is where I need to qualify that while a lot of systems thinking literature can give this the impression that it's a lot about tools making use of different systems thinking tools. I find that the most valuable aspects of systems thinking involves helping me understand and observe. Systems behaviors.

And what I mean by that is that when you start to read through systems thinking materials you'll come across kind of these funny terms. They'll talk about things like emergence, or path dependence, or things like I don't know, I'm gonna,[00:19:00] I don't want to make things up, but basically you, systems practitioners have evolved, have grown, and evolved their practice to a point that they've, they've been able to kind of create new ways to describe systems phenomena.

And that to me, it allows me to kind of appreciate how systems can be observed in different ways. So that's typically when I, when you talk about applying it in my work, first and foremost, that's typically how I apply systems thinking. I don't tend to Apply by draw using a tool like causal loop diagrams.

That's not what I that's not what I do on a daily basis But I tend to think a lot about systems because of what I've read about systems thinking does that make sense?

Nirish Shakya: And in terms of like the systems that you work with, think about what kind of systems are these?

Boon Chew: Well, that's [00:20:00] the beauty of systems thinking in that the moment you can I'll try to explain it first, and then get to a point where essentially systems are everywhere. But that's a bit of a cop out, because it's easy to say that systems are everywhere, but in reality, systems are everywhere. A system is basically anything that has things inside them.

I'll call them parts that, that interact with each other. So these parts interact and, and as they interact with each other, certain behaviors of that system. Either emerge or either intentionally or, or otherwise that gives us, gives that system, its behavior. So an example of that could be a society. It could be even a mechanistic thing, like a traffic light, a bicycle.

So bicycle, if you think about it as a human component and a non human component, but you also have the environment that supports this, the cycling to happen, the roads. The fact that you have [00:21:00] gravity without gravity, you can't cycle.

Nirish Shakya: So you can...

Boon Chew: So then you start to think about like, wait a minute.

Whoa, this is starting to 

Nirish Shakya: the system. So you can pretty much expand the boundaries of the system like, infinitely.

Boon Chew: Yeah, I guess to a point where you think it's useful and I think the that's this, this is, it's worth mentioning that a lot of what we, our practitioners refer to as systems. Are just constructs, right? They're just, we call them systems because it's easy for us to refer to that thing. Whereas in the

reality, it might not actually, it's, it's, we're, it's abstracted away.

We were extract, extracting something away for the purposes of problem solving or something like that. If that makes sense.

Nirish Shakya: Yeah, 

Boon Chew: not sure if it did.

Nirish Shakya: yeah. It's basically kind of like, putting things in a container. So 

that we 

Boon Chew: it's a model ish. Yeah, System is a kind of a [00:22:00] model.

Nirish Shakya: Mm hmm. And one thing that actually I'm super interested in at the moment is how we can use systems thinking not just to Like I said observe and understands these external systems that we're part of and that we design for But also the the internal systems within the self because you know we human beings, we are also a system, right?

We have, we have our we display these external behaviors, which are then driven by our internal goals and values and beliefs and ultimately our, deeper strengths and mindsets. Have you, have you seen anything exploring systems thinking in, in, in that context?

Boon Chew: Yeah, what I've tended to come across is that [00:23:00] there are a lot of things out there that will, that approach things by default in a systemic way. I'll use mental health as an example. So, I've suffered from low moods and worry in the past and signed up for things like cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a fantastic thing.

Approach for helping one's self navigate through anxiety and worry and things like that. A lot of things inside taught through CBT has parallels to systems thinking because it's about kind of being aware. Of these different things that happen in, in, in your body, in, in your mind.

And just being mindful that they have an effect on each other. And from a system's perspective, you could.[00:24:00]Treat all of those things individually, but you can also and should also treat them interactively with each other as a whole system. You should do both, basically. A lot of systems thinking ends up becoming a bit of an AND type of practice.

It's not OR. Which one do I do now and ignore, like, tell me, tell me what to do, like, the one thing I should do. Systems thinking doesn't work like that. Systems thinking is an and practice. So you're always collecting the ands. So, you focus on one thing, like, just focus on maybe your emotional part, right, of CBT.

That's only one part, you also have to take into consideration all the other things that also play a factor in your mental health and so on and so

Nirish Shakya: So it encourages you to zoom out and take in more of what's going on around you.

Boon Chew: Yeah, it does. Yeah, it, which kind of [00:25:00] sounds counterintuitive because I know some people who would struggle with that approach because there's just too much information to deal with but at the same time, if you allow yourself to get used to the fact that this eventually allows you to approach things in a more holistic way, in a more, measured way, it does start to pay back dividends eventually, it just takes a bit of effort and time.

Nirish Shakya: Yeah. Yeah. I was speaking with my strengths coach in the previous episode. Her name is Kate Barry. And one of the things that we're talking about was how we all have different strengths, like different natural strengths and It's those strengths that actually drive a lot of our decision making and behaviors and preferences.

So for example you might be a deep thinker, whereas I might be a fast talker, [00:26:00] right? And if we're kind of coming into a meeting and I'm just like talking my way through it. You might feel overwhelmed by what, the way I'm operating in the meeting because you might need, for example, longer time to think and you might, feel as if I'm not empathizing with your needs and strengths and maybe vice versa.

I might think, oh yeah, Boone is being, so slow. It's not talking at all. It's thinking all the time and it's not getting things done. So, a lot of times, we, we, we might find it hard to empathize with the people that we work with because we're only seeing their surface level behaviors, right?

Like, if we look at the iceberg model. From systems thinking like we're seeing the tip of the iceberg, which is our behaviors, but we're not seeing You know, what is what what what is driving those behaviors? So one of the things that we're talking about was okay How can you maybe help people map out the layers underneath the iceberg like under under the tip of the [00:27:00] iceberg?

So what what is causing these behaviors not just within me but also within the people i'm working with so that We can better empathize with what's with their system within them that we can't visibly see.

Boon Chew: Yeah, I think the more mysterious things are, the harder it is to work out how they interact or affect other things. And at some point, it's just better to not try to work out what those things are. Mm hmm. And... Sometimes approaching systems from the perspective of just observing a system work the way it is without trying to take it apart.

So the idea that, you, you can't slice a baby in half to figure out how a baby works.

Nirish Shakya: I haven't 

Boon Chew: it's a bit, 

Nirish Shakya: actually. 

Boon Chew: it's, it's, it's a little bit like that. Yeah, you kind of have to take the system as it is.[00:28:00] You can't slice it down like a layer cake and expect to learn how a system works by taking it apart that, you stop making the system a system anymore.

Nirish Shakya: but you can abstract that system onto like an external, thing. So we can actually study that external model of the system.

Boon Chew: Yeah, you can. I, I think there are certain risks about that, partly because there are, there are so many things we don't fully understand. What, what's happening actually happening inside us, it's a bit of a mystery. But you can, you can certainly do that, just, just, just sometimes for the sake of exploring things or, working things through.

It doesn't stop you from doing that.

Nirish Shakya: Hmm, yeah.

Boon Chew: Yeah.

Nirish Shakya: And within your own life as a designer have you tried using systems thinking for, for your own life? Like maybe like map out systems [00:29:00] within your own life?

Boon Chew: Not really. I, I mean, I kind of go back to my point about not trying to be too clinical about modeling out things too literally, especially things I don't fully understand. So yeah, I tend to, tend to avoid doing things like that. I worry that I might misinterpret things the wrong way as a result of doing that.

Nirish Shakya: What do you, what do you, what are you worried about?

Boon Chew: Well, misdiagnosis, there are all kinds of biases that I could be attaching or misrepresentations from modeling things out in inappropriate ways, especially when I start to feel really confident about. And a specific way of mapping out a system. How do [00:30:00] I know? I don't, I have no way of observing what's really happening underneath. And that, that, it's a risky space

Nirish Shakya: Oh, you do have, you do get indicators, right?

Boon Chew: Yeah, the reason why I think it's dangerous is because we tend to form mental models of things really easily. We start to observe how systems work, we think, oh, there must be something in there that, that, that has this thing. We start to formulate a model of how things work. And sometimes they work, sometimes they help us, like Newton's law of gravity. They're incredibly useful for most applications in our daily lives, but there is a point in which Newton's laws cannot apply. It doesn't fit reality when you start to zoom out at planetary scales because of time. I mean, Einstein's work, blah, blah, blah.[00:31:00]

So they're essentially, a lot of these models are coping mechanisms. And that's also a good trait of a systems thinker to be able to understand to which extent certain models will be useful and stable for representation or whatever. And at what point does it not work at all? Because it, it, it, it, it's funnily a very incorrect view of reality.

A good systems thinker who, who's read well enough and tried, tried different ways of, of tackling systems issues will be able to understand how to navigate those thresholds and not to just assume that every type of mystery will be able to be, will be, will be able to resolve by a simple map.

It doesn't quite work that way.

Nirish Shakya: Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. That's, that's not something I had considered. Because the, the way I was thinking was obviously the, the map is not the territory, [00:32:00] but you need some kind of map to start with. And the map can always evolve and change and, get, get better, improve over time.

So are you, are you saying we just... Don't need the map at all. We just don't like get rid of the map. 

Boon Chew: No, I wouldn't say that. I would say that use it. For getting you from A to B, and then discard it once you've figured out the model needs to be something else. As you continue, as you continue learning. And testing your hypotheses about your own mental models or your own models of system. Your models should evolve and should change as your observations about it, as you, as you learn new things about your system and the, the, in fact that the, i, the idea of a system is artificial in of itself.

What you're calling is a system, is a, is an artificial construct. So that's another thing to be mindful [00:33:00] about that. Eventually, what you've, what you, you might get to a point where you realize what the system you are observing is only one aspect of this bigger, more important thing which is calling out to you.

And then you're gonna have to scrap a whole bunch of the old stuff and start again. But you know, it, it is an iterative process. Like anything.

Nirish Shakya: So are you saying systems are not real

Boon Chew: Yeah. In a sense that when we describe it we are calling systems, systems because we have certain models in our mind to describe how a system work, but that's obviously not how, not, not the territory, so to speak. Right. Google Maps is not the actual. Real place. It's just a representation of a place.

Nirish Shakya: but it's a representation of I guess [00:34:00] a real place

Boon Chew: Yes, it's a representation of an actual actual thing.

Nirish Shakya: But even when you're for example doing system maps that is still a representation of I would say real systems, aren't they?

Boon Chew: Well, they're a representation of something, but they're not the territory like what you said. They're not

Nirish Shakya: So what is the territory then?

Boon Chew: Well, the territory is like, it's what, what the real world is, it's, it's what we, the lived experience is exposed to, our environments, that's, that's the real world. Systems aren't the real world, they're basically just, they're shortcuts to describe the real world, but the real world is the real world.

Nirish Shakya: Okay. So what you're Calling a system is basically the the construct that you know, we create

Boon Chew: That's right 

Nirish Shakya: the, the model and not the actual real thing outside. Yeah. Okay.

Boon Chew: Yeah.[00:35:00]

Nirish Shakya: Hmm. Okay. That's, that's really, good to, good to know that. Because yeah, I think there's, there's, I find there's a lot of kind of yeah, confusion about systems thinking and, and how that can be used practically, especially in, in the world of design, because I, I do feel like systems thinking is relatively new.

In the world of human centered design. So, if you're a designer who is interested to learn more about systems thinking and embed that into your current practice what is your, what advice would you give them?

Boon Chew: That there are two websites I recommend or two yeah, two sources. I'll mention the first one, which is called the systems thinker. com. I'll mention that because it's been around for a very long time. A lot of the content in there are from systems experts or people who've been in this field for a very long time.

They would have [00:36:00] gone through years and years of trial and error, lots of debate and arguments to come up with hopefully what seems like a fairly stable set of perspectives regarding whatever it is that they're writing about. The other resource is kind of the opposite. It's a a fairly new community of People who are interested in systems and complexity, and it's called the systems innovation hub or the systems innovation network.

I can't quite make out what they actually call themselves. Sometimes I come across systems, innovation hub. Sometimes I think I come across systems innovation network. I think the network is basically the global thing. And then the hub is a bit like the local group.

Nirish Shakya: okay, that's interesting.

Boon Chew: so like a hub and

Nirish Shakya: Yeah, their website, they call themselves System Innovation Network.

Boon Chew: Yeah, so it's a network of hubs. Maybe that's kind of what it is.

Nirish Shakya: It's a system. It's a complex system.

Boon Chew: Yeah they're [00:37:00] good for kind of meeting other people who are also new to systems thinking. There's a lot of kind of. very accessible material to learn about different, I don't know, systems and complexity related stuff. So I would recommend those two sources. I would recommend actually using them both together, partly because I advise not to only use one set of resources alone.

I think systems thinking is one of those domains that benefit from multiple, having multiple perspectives. So you have the perspective of fairly advanced, very experienced practitioners who may be writing for an audience that might not be new to systems thinking, right? So it can be a bit technical, a bit hard to access. But it's good [00:38:00] to bounce off when you start to get a bunch of the basics, Yeah, once you start to familiarize yourself with some of the more easy stuff, It's good to kind of compare notes with stuff from the old hats, so to speak. Yeah, that's what I recommend.

Nirish Shakya: Yeah, yeah, I It was last year, I, I did a course called Human Centered Systems Thinking that was offered by IDEO and I thought it was really, really good actually. And it definitely, it helped me learn a lot about how this applies into human centered design. And as part of the course we had to do a project and I basically worked on a project that I'm actually working on in real life.

Around creativity, education and self awareness for kids in Nepal and going into the course my focus was entirely on the actual children or school children, but after having used some of the tools to map out the system one thing that came to my realization was that the biggest [00:39:00] leverage point in the system was not the actual Kids but the school teachers like we were identifying some like, Leverage points in the system map and we saw that a lot of these arrows that you mentioned earlier kind of point towards the teacher They're like right in the middle of the system interacting with the schoolchildren the headmasters, government bodies, policy makers and so on and approaching them first would be, would have the, the highest impact for the lowest effort.

And I wouldn't have been able to, I guess, identify that if I hadn't done some level of systems thinking to understand, zoom out and understand the system.

Boon Chew: Yeah, I think that's where a lot of some some of the tools that we use in design can come really helpful, particularly user research, because we can use those skills and user research yeah, to [00:40:00] explore and, and, and work through larger problem spaces, but essentially, researching more people instead of just a single user type.

And that's what I learned in this self assistance methodology course. That it is essentially a process of, of interviewing and understanding people across a very, a very large system. And. Pulling all that information together to understand the dynamics of people working with each other, working across the system, how non human parts of the system can influence and factor into people's interactions and so on.

So it's quite interesting once you... start to get stuck into mapping a space like that. You're no longer just working with pixels and buttons and things like that.[00:41:00]

Nirish Shakya: Yeah, I mean, they're, they're a very tiny part of the bigger system.

Boon Chew: Yeah.

Nirish Shakya: So are you saying, we need to do research and collect data before we can start on a systems thinking journey?

Boon Chew: There are many ways to go about collecting data. User research is one approach, but there are other... ways to get access to that data. I've heard my friend Mikhail, who is that systems thinking friend I told you about earlier. He, Has used newspaper articles or just yeah, stuff that gets widely published for some of the work that he has done.

Partly because they're in public domain. They are fairly well documented or fairly well written about news issues. So he will use that. To work [00:42:00] out the dynamics of system components. So when an article says this increases that, or when this happens, this happens, he'll try and use that as, as, as, as, well, one starting point to build out his systems map.

So there are many ways to go about doing it. You could also do a workshop and get people who are. knowledgeable about different aspects of the system kind of come together and bring their own knowledge and expertise into, onto the table and through work mapping out, connecting the dots across everyone's information, build the system out that way.

Nirish Shakya: Mm hmm.

Boon Chew: Anyways.

Nirish Shakya: And Boone, so you are also one of the local leaders for the Interaction Design Association chapter. In London[00:43:00] and then that's how we met almost 10 years ago now, 

So how did you get into IXDA and becoming one of the local leaders and, and what, what's that like?

Boon Chew: So my first touchpoint with the iXDA was through the old mailing list, which had a presence on the website as well. They posted all their mailing list activity on a website, kind of like a listserv style website. And I was looking for... Some advice about universities to apply to for HCI programs and somebody responded to me.

And since then I've been aware of the XDA. It was not around the time when the first few conferences started happening that I noticed quite a lot of activity. I'd say globally but predominantly in North America and Europe. People [00:44:00]coming together around the domain of interaction design. And when the global conference started to come over to Dublin in Europe for the first time.

I got myself a ticket and went to the conference and that, that. It was quite of a big eye opener for me the, the level, the, the kind of talks that I was exposed through there, the types of people, which just kind of blew my mind. It felt like a completely new world that had been just been waiting for me, for me to discover.

And since then, I've, I've, I've continually tried to attend every single conference. I've missed one or two, but like the conferences has continued to be one of the kind of mainstays of my connection to the community. After Dublin Jason Massoud, who also co organizes the group with me,

Nirish Shakya: And he's been on this show as well,

Boon Chew: Yeah, yeah, [00:45:00] so

Nirish Shakya: three, actually, yes.

Boon Chew: yeah, he's a big supporter of your work. So he's, he and I run the monthly meetups here in London. Like, he was a big fan. He's always been a big fan of the XDA and wanted to start a chapter here. So that's kind of the back story. For, for the group and we've been running it for about 10 years now. So,

Nirish Shakya: And what do you get out of it?

Boon Chew: It's the content but predominantly it's the people. For me it's a lot about conversations because the conversations are essentially the vehicle for sensemaking. And what we're trying to make sense of essentially is Maybe it's different for different people, right? But if we say that we are designers and there's, there's a certain uniqueness about being a designer and approaching things in a designerly way it shouldn't be a magic. A [00:46:00] mystery type of thing. I think we should be able to articulate the significance of what that is. And granted some of that might seem quite esoteric. As we, when we articulate it. But that's what we do when we work through our design processes. When we work through our thinking or our approach.

Some of it is a little bit ambiguous. And it is, it's not very predictable once you set yourself off to work on a design challenge. It isn't, how you think you might get through a problem might not end up being that way. So it's always an element of chance, but I think that what makes it valuable is talking to other designers about it and having a way or at least a space to have these meaningful discussions, which would otherwise be very difficult to to [00:47:00] facilitate because, how often do you come, come across a situation where you get to talk to Somebody else, Joe Public about designally approach to something, in a random pub or something.

That's very rare, so we almost have to set up our own spaces to do this. But kind of what you're doing now, I think.

Nirish Shakya: Yeah. Yeah. And I've, I've been to, a lot of the IXDA events that you've run. And yeah, every time, I do come out a wiser designer in terms of like learnings from, from the people that you bring in to each of these events. So if you're interested in meeting other designers, learning from them, Looking at case studies and basically all the, the cool new things going on in, in the world of interaction design.

Yeah, I would highly recommend checkout one of the, the, the London chat bay events that the I X T A runs so Boone, if you could redesign any system in the world, what would [00:48:00] you?

Boon Chew: I think there's a lot of imbalance in the way systems that are entangled with capital are set up today. There's a lot of inequity across societies. And it's set it, setting us up, setting societies up in fairly unhealthy ways. I, I don't know. I mean, I can't say much more in detail about that, but I guess an example of some of the imbalances involved.

How concentrated our capital seems to be on real estate.

Nirish Shakya: Hmm.

Boon Chew: Which seems bonkers because these are, fairly fundamental parts of how healthy societies can thrive. That, that shouldn't really be an expense or luxury at least at its basic level. So that could be redesigned, I think. It might be ambitious, but[00:49:00] it's not impossible and we don't necessarily have to bin capitalism and go completely AWOL, but I think it needs a rebalance yeah, I don't know, sorry, a

Nirish Shakya: No, no. I

Boon Chew: bit heavy.

Nirish Shakya: yeah, yeah. Can I ask you how you do that or is that way beyond your pay grade?

Boon Chew: I don't think it has anything to do with my pay grade I think it has a lot to do with. conversations with people and having enough people committed to trying new ways of doing things. And then trying to scale that out in a much more distributed way so that people can Gain the confidence and trust in how a system can sustain for everyone without collapsing on itself

Nirish Shakya: Hmm.

Boon Chew: Yeah, I think [00:50:00] Yeah, I think conversations are always very critical for things like that I think that's kind of how I would go about doing it.

But yeah, I'm not saying it's easy

Nirish Shakya: Hmm. Yeah. We, we keep hearing people saying, Oh, the system is broken or don't trust the system. And then things like that. How, how does that apply in the context of systems thinking? What are they? Referring to.

Boon Chew: I think they're referring to systems that kind of emerge out of fairly powerful actors that have a lot of leverage in that system that have an overwhelming advantage over other actors in the system just because they, it's easier for them to pull things off. And we lack either the knowledge or exposure or the means to act on things that help the system [00:51:00] achieve a better balance for everyone.

I just, yeah, so there are a few leverage points there, just in hearing myself speak and say what I've just said. The fact that you've got components of knowledge and education, this coming together of people. but also the means for us to be able to take action. These are kind of a few building blocks, so to speak.

Which you can't just deal with one of them in isolation. You kind of have to take a few of those little things and almost come up with a little MVP. Of sorts to start to create an environment for people to be able to work with each other in certain ways. Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm making sense,

Nirish Shakya: That totally makes sense. I think, yeah, for, for me, like you said assistive thinking can be a tool to facilitate a lot of those conversations that are [00:52:00] probably missing in a lot of these complex systems of moment. And we're seeing so much polarization and whatnot that is actually bringing people further apart rather than.

And bring them more closer together to have some meaningful conversations and seeing eye to eye as to what are those differences

Boon Chew: Yeah, and I think this comes back to our earlier discussion about the fact that our systems are abstract constructs of reality. Because actually what's happening in our minds are our models themselves, models of systems, models, how we think the world works,

Nirish Shakya: As absolutely and and my model might be entirely different to your model. Although we might be looking at the same thing

Boon Chew: That's absolutely right. I think you're bang on. I think that's where we need to have conversations about our models. See, I think it works this way. How can we, how can we talk to each other about our models in ways that make it more productive?[00:53:00]

That when one might not be right or wrong, right, there are just fundamentally different ways of approaching.

a thing or whatever, right? And can we find ways to adapt our models in such a way that that, that change the nature of how things work in reality? Yeah, maybe that could be possible.

Nirish Shakya: Yeah, and I think you're having that Common language can be crucial because even you know Even with an organization like we lack the common language to talk about the models in our head Like as a designer we think of a certain model of how the users interact with the system and why they do it Versus you know a developer might have a completely different understanding of that versus someone from business, right?

And we never see eye to eye. We're like always like arguing about, what's more important and what's less important. And the models are completely different and there's no common language to bridge the gaps between those models.

Boon Chew: Yeah, and that comes back to my point about systems thinking and complexity thinking [00:54:00] as well. I'll add complexity thinking to the mix.

Nirish Shakya: What's complexity thinking?

Boon Chew: Well, systems thinking looks at systems, complexity thinking looks at complexity. What's complexity you ask? Bring me to another, you have to bring me back for another session. But that's I think in a nutshell kind of like the main differences between the two, and they don't necessarily agree with each other sometimes. But I was trying to say that oh gosh, what, what was, what was I trying to say? That, oh, I forgot, I completely lost it. I can't remember. So I might, might just drop it.

Nirish Shakya: No worries. We can leave that for the next episode when you were back.

Boon Chew: Fair enough.

Nirish Shakya: So, Boone imagine it's your last day on earth so we're at the end of your movie and you're on your deathbed and someone comes up to you with a tiny post it and a sharpie and asks you to write your last words for humanity. [00:55:00] What would you write on the tiny piece of paper?

Boon Chew: Thank you for I don't know. An opportunity to live a life. In the way that we have. I guess it's a bit of a gift. Being able to, to live lives as people. Sometimes it's not easy, but I think it's kind of a miracle that we get to do people things. Laughter. S so why not

Nirish Shakya: that. I love the gratitude that you're bringing into this. Because a lot of times we do take our life for granted.

Boon Chew: Mm.

Nirish Shakya: And it can be taken away like in a blink of an eye.

Boon Chew: Yeah. In the last few months I've lost, or yeah, I've lost a friend and a friend has lost a a, a brother and yeah, they, yeah, they, they're, they're [00:56:00] key reminder that, Things can be quite fleeting sometimes

Nirish Shakya: Hmm. I'm sorry to hear that, man.

Especially during COVID, like it's, I think it's taught us about the fragility of life at such a global scale that we've never seen in our lifetime before. And I think, we've, I mean I've, I've certainly come out at the end of that with a different perspective on what's, what's more important in life and what's less important.

Has, has something like that happened to you as well?

Boon Chew: Yeah, I think so. I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of people are reluctant to go back to our daily commutants. I mean, why, why do we want commutants? Tell me again why? It doesn't make sense. Yeah, I think that's just one like one example I can think of. [00:57:00] But in connection to that, there's a whole host of other things that we benefit from doing things a different way, afforded by, yeah, the lifestyle because of COVID.

It's just given us a different reality to, to think about and to live through. So, yeah, I would agree with you. 

Nirish Shakya: Yeah, and, and that could be a whole new episode in itself.

Boon Chew: That could be a whole new episode on In Love Itself, yeah.

Nirish Shakya: So, again,

a really fascinating conversation there Boone. I think some of my takeaways has been this new insight for me that, the system is not the real thing, that the map is not the territory and don't be afraid to discard the system once you've achieved a certain goal and then maybe recreate [00:58:00] the, the map of the system so that you can continuously evolve your understanding of how the system works because that understanding can constantly change and improve.

Boon Chew: Yeah.

Nirish Shakya: Also I loved, what you said around how systems can be facilitators of conversations of how, there are so many different systems at play at any given moment in time. Between, between people, like we all have different systems in our head, and it's those differences in the systems that can make some of the conversations more difficult because we're all seeing that real thing with different maps and different models.

And if we can bridge some of those models through common language, that would solve a lot of our conflicts and griefs we have in the workplace and families and governments and in the world in general.

Boon Chew: Mm hm.

Nirish Shakya: and [00:59:00] thanks also for sharing some of the resources that that's helped you out. So we're going to put those resources in the show notes as well.

Mainly the systemsthinker. com and also the systemsinnovation. network. So if you are interested as a designer or as anyone who's listening right now to learn more about systems thinking and how you can apply it in your work and life, yeah, please do check out those resources. And... Booned if people would like to follow you or connect with you.

How can they do that?

Boon Chew: LinkedIn's probably the best channel for me. Yeah.

Nirish Shakya: Great. Awesome So we'll put your linkedin link as well in the show notes. 

Is there a question that I haven't asked you that you would ask yourself?

Boon Chew: No, I really had a good time at your birthday party.

And would love to come out again.

Yeah,

Nirish Shakya: it's really fun. And thanks. Thanks for the plant. I've still got it. It hasn't died yet.

Boon Chew: Awesome. Keep it going.

Nirish Shakya: [01:00:00] I'm a bit of a plant kidder, but your plant still survives.

Boon Chew: Okay. Well, I'm, yeah, I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. I'm not a plant person, a plant guru by any stretch. But there's a, there's a plant shop near my house and they sell some lovely things. And I thought, yeah, it's a really, it's a really nice gift to be able to give someone a plant. I just thought. I'm like, yeah, so that's what I decided to get you.

Nirish Shakya: I love receiving plants as gifts. I think I just love having more nature within my space because, that's something that I really miss. I grew up, around a lot of nature and yeah, I don't, I live in a flat in London, so I have a lot of nature around me. Yeah, that's why I just tend to collect plants and I've been doing that a lot more since the pandemic as well.

So yeah, thank you.

Boon Chew: Yeah, welcome

Nirish Shakya: Awesome. So great to have you on Design Feeling Boone. And we, well, I'll, I'll definitely hope to have you back to dig deeper into some of the other topics like complexity thinking and a few of the things that we came up with the conversation.[01:01:00] But for now, have a great day and we'll see you again soon.

Boon Chew: All right. Thanks nourish and thanks everyone

Thank you so much for listening in. If you have any suggestions or topics or people that you'd like to have on the show, please email me at nirish@designfeeling.co. I respond to every email. And see if you can share this podcast with one friend who wants to increase their self-awareness, creative confidence and meaning. See you next time.