What is Systemica?
Systemica – A different way of looking at the world around us.
Many of us approach the world around us by breaking it into smaller pieces and dealing with them one at a time. If something isn’t working they way we want, we call it a problem or an accident an we try to “fix” the problem. I want to suggest a different way of seeing things.
Let’s talk about coffee. Who doesn’t like a good cup of coffee?
What does it take to make a great cup of coffee? Let’s take a look:
In order to find the best cup of coffee we might start at the far left, and just try lots of cups of coffee until we find the best. Or we might move one level deeper and try different beans until we find one we like best, try different water sources… and move down the list one at at time finding the best solution.
The most fanatic coffee aficionado would go to the far right. [I don’t mean to say “fanatic” like it’s a bad thing. I’ve spent many pleasant hours on the right side of this diagram! :)] If we wanted to be thorough, we would test each variable one at at time until we find the one we like best. When we put them together we would have discovered the best cup of coffee in the world. This a common way of thinking and we use it to build everything from coffee pots to nuclear submarines.
There’s just one problem, there is a hidden assumption that usually is wrong! Let just take two variables and I’ll show you what I mean.
Let’s start by tasting Colombian coffee beans brewed by different methods:
If we ranked them on a scale of 1 to 5, we might come up with results like this. The french press tasted best.
Now let’s taste lots of different beans with our new french press machine:
We ranked them again and this time we thought that Honduran beans tasted best. Test over. Coffee analysis complete.
This is the one variable at a time method (OVAT). Seems reasonable, but let’s plot the tests together [Note: I normalized the values in the second test to the first so the Columbian beans w/ French Press were the same value]:
Now it becomes clear how much of the design space was untested. You might consider additional tests unnecessary, but this is only true if there is no relationship between the two variables (hidden assumption) and there has been insufficient testing to determine if they are independent. In this real world there are often correlation between the variables. In fact, in the case of coffee drinking, there are many variables beyond just these two that affect or coffee tasting experience including us, the drinker!
We approach these questions by first defining the system in focus: The person, the tools, the goal, and the environment where the drinking occurs. By focusing on the relationships between the variables, you will often ask questions and challenge assumptions that others will miss.
So, this is Systemica – a place where we can ask questions, challenge assumptions, and discuss how to see things differently.