Sunday, April 24, 2016

5th Symposium of Relating Systems Thinking and Design


5th Symposium of Relating Systems Thinking and Design
Systemic Design for Social Complexity
Ontario College of Art and Design
                                  Ontario Canada
                         http://systemic-design.net
                              October 13-15, 2016

The theme for the 2016 symposium is Systemic Design for Social Complexity, which calls for design methodologies informed by research and real applications to address problems in the unbounded complexity of social systems.  Systemic design addresses social complexity at multiple levels of interaction: Sociotechnical work practices and technology, Complex service design and integration, Organizational design and management, and Social system and policy design.
 
The 2016 theme calls for "completing" research and fruitful case studies that share results and impacts with the RSD community.  Across all topic areas, we are dealing with design problems for both emergence (uncertain future evolution) where "change unfolds" and governance (design, evaluation and control in complex systems) where change is intentionally designed. Systemic design aims to integrate across methods and theories of change.
 
We are interested in studies and projects that bridge differing epistemic and methodological commitments (as found in healthcare), rigorously adapting from system theories and design methods (as in system model mapping), and across sociotechnical and ecological approaches to systems.
 
The RSD5 call for participation requests an extended abstract that expresses your proposal to share original research, case studies, panel sessions/dialogues, posters and workshops. Ten research challenge areas are encouraged within the social complexity theme:
 
*                     Democracy, Policy Design and Modes of Governance
*                     Public Services Design and Civic Innovation
*                     Sustainability and Socio-ecological Policy
*                     Built Environment and Design of Settlements
*                     Capacity Building and Resilient International Development
*                     Systemic Business and Organizational Design
*                     Social System Design and Transition Design
*                     Service Design, Healthcare System Design                       
*                     Design for Complex Sociotechnical Systems
*                     Theories and Methods of Systemic Design
 
As proceedings from prior RSD symposia show, not all topics may be represented in the final conference. We will design the final presentation tracks "emergently" based on the papers selected from the review process. http://systemic-design.net/rsd-symposia/
 
Abstracts should be no more than 1000 words, listing all authors and affiliations, and summarizing the research or a case project proposed for presentation. Inclusion of key images is encouraged. Please provide references for all citations (APA format). 
 
Reviews are conducted by two independent reviewers experienced in peer review and the RSD symposia, following the criteria of: Fit to themes, Significance, Originality, Balance or depth of design and systemics, and Maturity (readiness for presentation).  Accepted abstracts will be asked to give a 20 minute presentation at the symposium. Papers not accepted for the main paper tracks may be asked to consider a Poster, or if appropriate, a Dialogue session. Please see the RSD5 website for guidelines on the symposium presentations and formats for presentation and discussion.
 
The schedule for abstracts and reviews is as follows:
 
April 24                 Abstracts due (submit via EasyChair)                       https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rsd5 
May 30                 Reviews and responses to authors
June 11                 Posters, Dialogues and Workshops due
June 27                 Final selection responses
 
All selected papers will be presented at the symposium, where we invite participants to engage with authors with questions and feedback that might contribute to general learning and application. Presenting authors will be asked to provide a public version of their presentation for the RSD5 proceedings immediately following the conference and a proceedings paper (3000-5000 words) by Dec 3, 2016.
 
As in prior RSD symposia, several key papers will be invited by the program committee to submit a full paper for publication in a special issue in FORMakademisk, the Norwegian design research journal. Other publishing opportunities may be available as well for papers in certain topic areas or significance.
 
Please contact Peter Jones or another member of the program committee if you have questions.  We hope to see in Toronto this October!
 
RSD5 Program Committee
Peter Jones - Lead Chair, OCAD University
Silvia Barbero - 2016 Chair, Politecnico di Torino
Alex Ryan - 2015 Chair, Alberta CoLab
Birger Sevaldson - 2012-2014 Chair, Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Jerry Koh,  MaRS Solutions Lab, Toronto
 
Peter Jones, Ph.D.   |    Design Dialogues    
937.902.5723 cell              937.919.6389               

Remember the call for participation is extended to May 3
.