Information sheet 2 Overview
Everything is interconnected. Every decision we make when we design things can have huge impacts (good or bad impacts). So when we design anything, we can look at its context as a big system of interconnected things, people living organisms and much more. This could help us design more carefully and assess the impact of whatever decision we take. In this session, students will learn how to create an ecosystem map for a product and outline the stakeholders, entities, artefacts and important connections. They will observe the existing connections between different parts of the system and try to change it and see how that might affect other parts of the system. The main aim is for the students to understand how things are related, and not in the details of how they express the ecosystem.
Summary of main ideas and topics
The big question
Are the things we use independent of everything else? Can we view anything as a part of a bigger system?
Other guiding question Everything is interconnected How do we see things as interconnected systems? Mapping out the ecosystem of a product Can we modify the system? Major impacts of seemingly small decisions
Session specific learning objective Explain how viewing the entire context of any product can augment the design process. Create an ecosystem map for a product, identifying the important stakeholder entities(living/ non-living), artefacts and the important connections between them Modify the ecosystem map, add or remove connections and loops and introduce new elements if necessary. Speculate the possible impact and consequences of a product or changes made to the ecosystem map.
14 | Information sheet 2
