Sharing by Design by Jeffrey Kok Hui Chan & Ye Zhang

Author:Jeffrey Kok Hui Chan & Ye Zhang
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030435691
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

4.2 Justifying the Systems Approach for Sharing by Design

In contrast, our approach is design-oriented and prescriptive. To paraphrase Banathy (1996: 19), our approach perceives the sharing system as a system of interconnected, interdependent, and interacting components, and aims to create a design solution as a sharing system made up of interconnected, interdependent, interacting, and internally consistent solution ideas. It is therefore concerned first and foremost with this design question: ‘how to design a sharing system?’. But to answer this design question, it is necessary to first address the following second-order epistemological question: ‘what are the components, parameters, and considerations that must be taken into account when designing a sharing system?’. In other words, what is the knowledge necessary for the design of sharing systems ? This is a question that we seek to address in this chapter. And diametrically different from Ostrom’s (2006) work, we do not, and cannot, take the success of a sharing system as a given empirical fact, and then deduce the principles that must be present in order for the successful sharing system to be true. In other words, unlike Ostrom’s approach, we are unable to deduce functional principles as hypothesized design principles from sharing systems that exist and are, moreover, successful. At best, Ostrom’s principles are instructive, but they do not constitute the basis of our systems approach . Instead, we posit the success of a sharing system as the design goal, which the design process then attempts to approximate. If the objective of Ostrom’s work is to discover the general principles behind the success of CPR systems, then our aim is to design a successful sharing system . To formulate this differently, we aim to postulate the knowledge and method for designing a sharing system .

Importantly, we have modeled our design method after Churchman’s (1968) systems approach , which is further informed by Meadow’s (2008) more recent work in systems thinking . But what makes our design method modeled after the systems approach relevant for sharing by design ? Why, exactly, should the systems approach be privileged over other major design approaches—for example, the rational-computational design approach (Simon 1996), the increasingly popular participatory or co-design approach (Manzini 2015), and the dialogic-reflective design approach (Schön 1990)—to name just three major approaches in design? After all, to define something as a system is a design choice (Churchman 1971: 42), and this choice has to be justified.

We argue that when compared to these three major approaches, the systems approach offers the best fit for the design challenges peculiar to sharing systems . This best fit can be justified in the following two ways. First, and relative to other design approaches, the systems approach permits a clear visualization of important components within a sharing system. The systems approach then aims to represent these components and their dynamic relationships abstractly, but nevertheless clearly, to the designers and other participants . The transparency of the systems-driven design process then can facilitate more robust discussions among the participants. Second, these system

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