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Mark: Amen (I agree enthusiastically)! I believe a key feature of design is making an object(s) and 'seeing' the result. Design does not work on the 'think system' = all in your head. The role of making objects and testing them in a world guided by the recent "Design X" manifesto with its embrace of design for larger problems and complex systems is yet to be determined. But here's one thought: On a current project designing an intervention for maintaining proper O2 levels for pre-term infants and children with breathing problems, I (a designer) am completely incapable/unqualified to design the whole medical system comprised of nurses, doctors, changing shifts, handoffs, rounds, EPIC data entry, alarms, etc. etc.. This is just way beyond my expertise, even my ability to understand at a nuanced level. But I am ABLE to contribute to this complex problem as part of a team that analyzes/designs a model of the whole system (15 multiple-hour each observations thus far leading to a preliminary flow model) and then identifies specific intervention points where I/we (the design part of the research team) make prototypes and test them to see their impact on the whole system. Simultaneously changing multiple parts of a whole complex system is filled with unpredictability and can hardly be called design if reaching a preferred state is part of the definition. And our preferred state is an outcome: improved maintenance of O2 level in the target (prescribed by the doctor) range. Design often changes more than one variable in prototyping/making objects for testing but in a system (particularly a medical system where a high O2 level causes blindness and a low O2 level causes death) this is dangerous. We will have design sessions that specifically address other possible interventions at other points in the system where our intervention is not active, but we will be quite careful about implementing more than one design change at a time. I think (and this is preliminary based only on experience), making objects will still happen when designing whole systems but the objects will be identified to address specific identified problem points in the system that the design object is designed to change and tested one-at-a-time (or using common sense, with very limited and carefully selected other change(s) to the system) to gauge impact. Understand context/system; design system; identify intervention points; design objects for intervention points; test. To systems people this probably all sounds quite elementary, but it keeps "making things" in a good place I think. Thanks for the post. Sorry for the ramble, I really just intended to say "I agree!" Best... Mike Zender University of Cincinnati ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------