Abstract Organizational designers aiming to shape human systems are increasingly focusing on institutions. Traditionally known for creating artifacts in space, designers now seek to influence organizations and broader systems beyond products for strategic and ethical reasons. This article builds on the concept of “design as institutioning” as an approach to human systems design, arguing that designers should prioritize temporality over spatio-materiality. Drawing on strong process theory, relational sociology, and insights from Mead, Aristotle, and Augustine, the article introduces a “chordal triad of design agency.” This triad—comprising memory (present of things past), expectation (present of things future), and attention (present of things present)—provides a framework for designers to drive meaningful change in human systems.

Abstract As design discourse continues to grapple with complexity in sociotechnical systems, new methodologies have coalesced under the term — systemic design. These approaches rely heavily on systems mapping through co-design to synthesize stakeholder perspectives on a system-of-interest into a visual representation of the system — a system map. Subsequent visual abductive reasoning then becomes the primary meaning-making process and method of creating insight and consensus. While system maps are useful in many ways and contexts, they also have limitations that stem from their status as static visual artifacts. In other systems disciplines, system maps are frequently used as inputs into more dynamic modeling processes, like simulation. Systemic design has yet to adopt simulation widely, due to the large expense, specific expertise, and tremendous effort needed to create such models of complex systems. We offer a Playful Systems approach that uses game co-design as a more flexible, familiar, and functional, way of capturing and representing the dynamics of systems from varying stakeholder perspectives. We outline the advantages of our Playful Systems approach in terms of five qualities of iterative game design: dynamics, intervention, freedom, embodiment, and persistence and associate each with a collection of research questions that together create an agenda for design researchers who want to explore the unique power of games and game design for managing complexity in sociotechnical systems.

Abstract Relying on Krippendorff's description of “authentic conversation” we describe the ethnography of unimagined possibilities in the intersection of ethnography and human-centered design research. Possibilities are what inspire human-centered designers to create products, practices, and services that could satisfy currently unimagined yet real needs and desires. Although possibilities are not observable as such, they can be constructed in conversations of designers and other stakeholders. Hence, they can become extensions of real situations that are co-constructed as new realities.