STARTING DIFFERENTLY
- Admin
- Apr 15
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 21
OPENING APERATURES
One good thing about releasing loose book chapters is that we can share with our readers as work in progress sooner rather than later and reorder the materials when they go into the upcoming rather nonlinear book. In this brief chapter we want to reiterate a conceptual thread that is near and dear to the original idea for this Advancing Design for Complexity book.
Some of our long standing readers will recall that the notion of Starting Differently is how we began this journey as it was and is embedded in the original consideration criteria in our community call for methodologies for this Book 2 of Innovation Methods Mapping, extended, and reextended for numerous months in 2025.
Starting Differently in the context of Design for Complexity has always meant starting without challenge path assumptions or solution/evolution path assumptions baked into methodology. It’s a criteria that came out of real world practice aimed specifically into the terrain of Arena 3 (organizational change) and Arena 4 (societal change) and one that first tabled the context of NextD Journal circa 2005.
In addition to real world practice, our first book, Innovation Methods Mapping looking across 60+ methods spanning a period of 80+ years made it clear that it was and is a criteria that can be met by methods outside of design. At the time it seemed to be a rather straight forward notion.
Of course, whether we all like it or not, design methods tend to have considerable history that does not always fit well in the complexity contexts of Arena 3 and Arena 4.
Over the duration of several years, we conveyed the criteria idea in numerous international design conference talks, tabled in story form as a challenge to the audience as in: Imagine a designerly team arriving into a local or distant real world community that is facing some fuzzy, undefined, complex, problematic situations. Meeting with community leaders, the team conveys that they are there to help, all ears and interested in the big picture but everything has to be converted into a product, service or experience challenge/solution.
Would that make sense? Would arriving into fuzzy complex organizational and societal situations with such assumptions baked into methods make sense? Clearly no, but this is not so different from what many of the graduate design academies were teaching for numerous decades.
For us it became a hidden in plain sight elephant in the design living room worthy of some practice-based scholarly attention. It was not then and is not now, an elephant that everyone wants to talk about.
We already knew from Humantific practice that there was little chance for strategic design to really make the jump (beyond Cross-Over) to the terrains of Arena 3 and Arena 4 without taking on that elephant. We are certainly aware that several new design books have been published in the last few years that contain no problem finding/acknowledgement and no mention of that elephant.
Fast forward to 2025 in our various open calls, we were a little surprised to see that few methods coming from the direction of design could meet that simple criteria.
Looking across the community vibes it was clear that much time had been consumed for more than a decade via a prolonged focus/fixation on a not-so-scholarly misreading of “Double Diamond”. That time cannot be recovered but luckily there were folks in the fledgling emerging practice community who did not go down that rabbit hole.
As difficult as it was/is to find methodologies meeting that simple Starting Differently criteria we decided to do this book 2 of Innovation Methods Mapping anyway, allowing it to take on the various sub-text subjects intertwined with the big picture of Design for Complexity aimed into Arena 3 and Arena 4. Those popping up sub-subjects include ReCalibrating Pluralism, ReThinking Framing, ReThinking Wicked and many more.
This makes it a very different book from book 1 in this series.
What we have noticed recently is that there seems to be several versions of “Starting Differently” emerging in the design community. Happy to share how we make sense of that picture related to this book.
UPSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY (BIG SHIFT)
versus
DOWNSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY (TINY SHIFT)
One thing we did note along the way is that there are communities within design moving/adapting at different speeds. Some that made heavy investments in service design, product design, or experience design tend to be steadfast in their convictions regardless of VUCA/TUNA/BANI/RUPTA drivers shifting externally. Whether we all like it or not, efforts being made to reposition assumption-boxed methods in ways intended to make them appear more strategic and systemic in the face of VUCA etc. are now part of the complex community picture.
In that operational mode a project is, for example, started with service assumptions on-board, using service design logics with service design methods ensuring a landing into service terrain and then along the way need for a broader exploration is recognized but staying in the discipline-based assumption track of service using the same service design method, but introducing broader holistic thinking notions framed as systemic. It is an inverted, think narrowly - then broadly procedural logic, an academically rationalized jujitsu-like workaround to *open framing. Long story short: We recognize that as DOWNSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY.
The result is quite different from the broader open spectrum operational mode of UPSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY.
To clarify: Design for Complexity and this book have never been about assumption-boxed methods or DOWNSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY.
The differences between the two present some good diverse marketplace options that are presently not being so well explained by the graduate design academies. Much of the confusion is coming from the design community itself.
SUBTRACTION & ADDITION
Since we are here writing about UPSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY tending to be enabled via adding upfront know-how from other disciplines outside of design, including moving away from *discipline-based framing, it might be a good moment to also mention that Think-Blending also known as *Cross-Tribal Pluralism involves as much subtraction as it does addition.
Not all of what is inside the anchor approaches of Action Research, CPS, Design, Soft Systems Thinking and Wild Card translate well to the new terrain. As the various anchor approaches undergo strategic unpacking this becomes more clear. It’s not as simple as bundling two anchor approaches together without a considerable rethink of both in *OUTBOUND and INBOUND considerations.
A notion that was helpful to us in writing this book was to imagine a work place, a Zone for experimentation where each of the anchor approaches are being evaluated, taken apart and put back together differently, with many wild card additions and some parts being purposely jettisoned. That Complexity Redesign Zone is essentially the unofficial, somewhat outsider, not officially sanctioned by any institution, emerging practice community.
None of the approaches under reconsideration in that Zone are equivalent to simply selling any of the anchor approaches or even direct combinations of those anchors.
A somewhat difficult notion to convey, the Zone work is a big part of how Design for Complexity in various options is being realized. In the quest to create approaches more synced with the forces, responsibilities, and opportunities facing collective us all the anchor approaches are being unbundled.
Strategic curation/editing of what fits and what does not in the context of life-centered practice focused in the complexity arenas is a big part of creating a refreshed, coherent approach to methods redesign. Here we are most interested in the unbundled, reconsidered versions of all the anchors and wild cards. Considering the broad complex context facing collective us it makes most sense for Design for Complexity to walk the walk, not just talk-the-talk of open aperatures and holistic viewing.
Of course there are going to be folks in the marketplace continuing to advocate the traditional versions of the anchor approaches. That is not our focus here.
SUMMARY
UPSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY, the focus of this book, is Open Aperture. It's about starting complex Arena 3 and Arena 4 terrain engagements with an open aperture methodology that contains no assumptions regarding challenge paths and or evolution paths. This implies a rethinking, a redesign of traditional design methods, particularly on the front end, a significant shift. Rather than changing what exists the intention is to create new paths through the forest, without reinventing the wheel.
UPSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY is not about going down the narrowing path of assumption-boxed methods (product, service, experience) and then retrofitting an expanded viewing range using the same method remaining in the assumption track.
CLOSING
It's no secret that constructing books while operating a practice, doing public talks etc. is not ideal, however we are getting close to landing this plane. Not all chapters will be posted as works in progress.
If there are readers out there today who have methodologies that meet that UPSTREAM STARTING DIFFERENTLY criteria please let us know. In the book there will be a review of 10 influential historical methods and hopefully 10 that are operational as part of the landscape of emerging practice, all of which have undertaken various forms of *Think-Blending. That part of the book will be about architecture of process. We are not as part of this exercise engaged in evaluating effectiveness of methods. Happy to leave that subject for other others.
END.
NOTES TO READERS:
*Bringing assumptions into an intervention equation implies that someone upstream from your starting point has already done the work to determine that product, service or experience is the challenge to be addressed. If that is not that case then engaging with downstream methods is not an ideal fit. Neither product design, service design or experience design is meta design as each of them contain assumption tracks.
*Cross-Tribal Pluralism: see the Recalibrating Pluralism chapter in this book.
*Discipline-based framing refers to the type of challenge framing typically taught in design academies where a product designer recognizes and frames product challenges, a service designer recognizes and frames service challenges and an experience designer recognizes and frames experience challenges. In that framing mode the types of challenges being recognized and framed depend on the framers discipline background.
*Open framing: See Discipline-agnostic framing blow.
*Discipline-agnostic framing refers to the type of challenge framing where the framer works with cross disciplinary participants and frames all challenge types, not just those related to her/his discipline. Discipline-agnostic framing is most often found in Open Systemic Challenge Framing, which is not found in Action Research, Design or Soft Systems Thinking. This mode of framing often begins with the assumption of "mess". See BACKGROUND RESEARCH SHARING: Making Sense of PARNES "MESS" / ACKOFF "MESS" in this book.
*Think-Blending: See the Recalibrating Pluralism chapter in this book.
*OUTBOUND/INBOUND: See the Rethinking Holism chapter in this book.
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This is a book in progress...stay tuned!
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