Hi Gunnar,
Thanks for the message.
That's a really good illustration of the exactly the points I've been trying
to make. The image is a causal loop diagram collating together the factors
and relationships between them as seen by experts and stakeholders.
The sound bite by General McChrystal illustrates two errors in thinking
about this kind of modelling (and I'm presuming Gen McC is speaking tongue
in cheek) . This first error is the assumption that the purpose of the
causal loop diagram is to enable one to understand the situation. The second
error is to assume that one can understand the situation, whether using the
causal loop diagram or any other diagram.
Those assumptions work well on less complex problems. The role of systems
dynamics modelling, however, is for the problems that are too complex or
too big for humans to be able to understand 'in mind'.
Imagine the creation of the system dynamics process/software as a design
problem. The design brief is to create a design tool. The background
information is that humans are limited in their ability to think and
understand complex situations. The task is to create a design tool for
humans to be able to work with design situations that are too complex for
humans to be able to understand in mind or in discussion. The tool must be
able to collect information from humans at their level of understanding of
parts of the complex situation. It must then be able to combine all that
partial information in a way that each person can see that their
contribution remains true. Then it must provide a means to enable
stakeholders to see how the whole complex situation will play out, with all
the unexpected peculiarities of behaviours over time. This latter is
important. Complex systems commonly have unusual behaviours including short
and long term oscillations, sudden changes in direction, drives to failure
or excess, sudden collapse, and transformation into new systems through
learning and self -(re) organisation. In addition, this new design tool must
be able to allow designers and stakeholders to create new design
interventions and then change things in the design tool to see how each
proposed design intervention will likely play out so they can find out which
changes are better or worse.
System Dynamics modelling is such a design tool and it was designed to do
those design tasks to enable humans to think about things that are too
complex the envisage in mind.
The causal loop diagramming is the first stage. It is expected that one
would NOT understand the behaviour of all of what is represented in a causal
loop diagram In the case of the US Military model, lots of stakeholders and
experts contribute their on knowledge about which things are important and
which things cause what. That stakeholder and expert knowledge comes
together in a single causal loop diagram that everyone can check includes
their knowledge and how it fits with the knowledge of the situation of
others. This allows this assembly part of the process to be done well
within the capabilities of humans.
The whole causal loop diagram , however, is beyond what any individual can
understand. This is exactly as is expected and intended. If the causal loop
model was fully understandable then there would be no need to use system
dynamics modelling of the design situation - the design could be done by
traditional design methods.
The role of the next stage, stocks and flows modelling, is to create a
dynamic model that can be run to simulate how the world will behave over
time. That enables designers and stakeholders to think how they might
intervene by changing things and then test out their ideas.
The reasons for using these kinds of approaches are described by Forrester
(http://clexchange.org/ftp/documents/Roadmaps/RM1/D-4468-2.pdf )
The challenge of the COIN model is to create a realistic stocks and flows
model from the causal loop diagram and then test strategies to see their
consequences. It is at that stage that a different kind of more informed
partial understanding becomes possible.
Interestingly, looking over the COIN causal loop diagram, its clear it is
created from an American military strategists organisationally-focused
perspective. I'd guess that a causal loop model created by different groups
in Afghanistan would be different. For example, 'terrain', particularly
mountainous terrain of deep valleys, is something that shapes many aspects
of people's lives, group relationships, culture, priorities, family
structures, religion, perceptions of governance etc. and yet in the COIN
causal loop diagram it is relatively ignored (in brown about halfway down
right hand side) and not linked to much. It would be interesting to create
a composite causal loop diagram involving all stakeholders, and then create
a systems dynamic model containing the knowledge and purposes of all sides
to show how it would play out in terms of the different interventions.
It would not be possible to understand the causal loop diagram. It would
however be possible to see how the outcomes were likely to play out for
different strategies on each side.
Warm regards ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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--
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar
Swanson
Sent: Tuesday, 24 September 2013 5:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Maths for Design
On Sep 23, 2013, at 2:32 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 2. Create a 'causal loop diagram' this is a diagram that contains all
> the elements described above and the relationships between them. As
> examples, see,
or
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/2009/December/091202/0912
03-engel-big-9a.jpg
"When we understand that slide," General McChrystal said, "We'll have won
the war."
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
[log in to unmask]
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
[log in to unmask]
+1 252 258-7006
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