Day 03. Activating Global Futures
SystemViz for the Future-Maker:
The New Jeito, Judo, and Jagaad of Change
Wednesday June 24, 2:30pm EDT
✍️ Workshop, 3 hour session
To imagine the future, consider how systems tangle up our world. That isn’t easy because the tangle is extremely complex; too much to juggle in the mind at once. SystemViz is an open-source research project by Peter Stoyko about visualizing systems for interdisciplinary design (www.systemviz.com). The project recently launched a Visual Vocabulary of Systems codex to enable diverse groups to map systems through dialogue (see: www.systemviz.com/systemviz-codex2-poster-side1.pdf ). The Visual Vocabulary identifies a large number of system elements and dynamics to keep track of while thinking holistically about societal challenges. It is an open-source project under a Creative Commons Free Culture license (free to use, only attribution is required). The proposed workshop would use the Visual vocabulary as a starting point. Worthwhile change is often undermined by the inertia of systems, many of which operate at cross-purposes. Participants would visually map out the systems entangled within a design challenge.
Attention would turn to ways of influencing systems with the help of a new codex overlay: the “J11 Small Mover Tactics” (to be released at the workshop). These are ways that less powerful actors can affect change by thinking creatively about intervention points and inertial trajectory. Jeito, judo, and jugaad are marquee examples. Jeito (“little way” in Brazilian Portuguese) are tactics about understanding system dynamics to know when, where, and how to nudge systems to get desired outcomes. Judo (“gentle way” in Japanese) refers to tactics that leverage sources of unbalance within a system. Jugaad (“makeshift hack” in Hindi) are pragmatic attempts to adapt the systems to local circumstances to solve a problem. Participants will use a larger collection of these tactics to map out change strategies. This is “activation” in a powerful sense: using precise but careful system interventions to set new futures in motion.
Peter Stoyko
Chief Social Scientist & Information Designer, Elanica
Peter Stoyko is an interdisciplinary social science researcher and information designer working for Elanica, a consultancy with a global remit that specializes in service design and governance. Peter has 27 years of experience as a researcher, with 21 of those years spent conducting dialogue-based action research. (Action research involves those most affected by a challenge within the research process.) His work started within the civil service academies of several countries (Canada, South Africa, and Brazil). This has spread to consultancy work in the public, non-profit, and academic sectors. Much of this work involves developing new dialogue and visualization techniques to help diverse groups grapple with complex challenges. Peter also has 17 years experience as an information designer. This work is about orchestrating words and visuals (and sometimes motion) to explain complicated ideas. Examples include information graphics, motion graphics, e-learning modules, and dialogue tools. As part of his ongoing commitment to teaching, Peter has published a series of magazine information graphics within his EyeCues series and teaching tools under his EyeCodex series. The latter includes tools related to foresight (Service Foresight cards), culture (Mangrove model of ethnographic inquiry), and systems (SystemViz). Peter maintains an ongoing research interest in visual thinking.