Image © Jose & MidJourney
I graduated in 1989 and went to work for my dream company Novodesign, as one of their first industrial designers. I interrupted my work with them to do my Master of Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (1991–93), they supported me throughout my degree, and I came back and grew up in the company. In 1997 I was an executive director with a team, but I was getting restless. Novodesign taught me so much, this was a full service design consultancy that led some of the most impactful branding and design transformations that happened in Portugal for over 20 years, I understood the importance of systems by navigating complex design identity programs and implementing touchpoints via design, in all mediums and formats. My team was mostly focused on the physical objects and interfaces, but we had to understand the forest in order to design the leaf.
I have this beautiful recommendation letter written by my good friend Josh Hoyt dated March 3rd 1997, this was addressed to Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Josh was supporting my application to the Systems Science Ph.D, program at Portland State University. I met Josh in 1995 at the Aspen Design Conference, we remained friends, in 1996 I invited him to come speak to the Novodesign team about his experience and he stayed with me, he was then the director of product development at Ziba Design in Portland, we would stay up all night talking about design, organization, mentoring, client and project management. The recurring theme in all the conversations was the need to systematically apply a combination of logic and intuition with a flexible framework providing direction. I thought then that a systems approach was a great add to design, and although I thought this might take my career somewhere else, I was ready. Not sure how much the program has changed since then, but this is how the same program is described now:
“The doctoral program emphasizes systems ideas and methods, more specifically systems thinking, system structure and dynamics, data modeling, computer simulation, networks, complex adaptive systems, and decision analysis. Subject areas include environmental systems, sustainability, energy, health policy, biomedicine, and other areas where systems ideas or methods make unique contributions to knowledge.”
Things didn’t go as I planned with the Fundação, and though I was accepted in Portland, without a scholarship it wouldn’t work. Instead, I left Novodesign and founded my first design company in October 1997, Grandesign (still going strong). Sometimes I think about where my life would have led me if Portland had become true, and the reason I keep going back to this “fork in the road” is because I have never stopped thinking and dreaming in systems and, every time I go to a design gathering, the topic keeps on coming up.
I just attended the DMI Design Leadership Conference, and systems thinking and design were central themes in the conference discussions, reflecting a recognition that addressing today’s complex challenges requires holistic, interconnected approaches facilitated by robust design models and frameworks. But I am not sure if there are a lot of designers that follow this path of systems science, while it is great for all those interested in systems thinking integration and complex problem solving in an interdisciplinary environment, the requirements around quantitative skills (math) probably tend to attract more engineering, computer science candidates than designers. I wonder about our credibility as designers to really think and design systems, especially if we are less comfortable in quantitative analysis and mathematical modelling. I know that a complex system, especially involving humans, requires much more than just analytical skills, and those creating complex design systems (like Intuitive who just won 1st place at the Design Value Awards with their One Intuitive design system) give me some hope that we might be able to tackle some of the complex problems of today’s world. Without a Ph.D. in Systems Science.