Spring 2016 | SD-6510 | MCAD

Systems Thinking

 

This final project incorporated everything we had learned in the semester about systems thinking and had students describing a system, proposing three solutions or improvements to the system, and explaining a method to implement these ideas. My project looked at improving the design of a citywide bike sharing program, using the Minnesota Nice Ride as a model, and primarily dealt with the possible eco-effectiveness of such a system. Presented in the book Cradle to Cradle by Michael Braungart and William McDonough, eco-effectiveness goes beyond trying to “be less bad” and involves designs that improve the world, whether it is through ecological restoration, adding diversity, or enabling technical or biological metabolism.

 

Systems thinking is the foundation for all work in sustainability. Sustainable design is concerned with the overall system and lifecycle. In contrast, much of today's design and behavior is created without concern for environmental or human costs, activities are done without respect for impact, and end-of-life may not return to earth systems. The key to informed design is systems thinking, and this course gave us the methods to explore systems connectivity, languages to enable full communications, and metaphors for common system properties.

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Click here to view entire assignment (PDF).

 

Tools: Adobe InDesign