Systems Design Thinking: Identification and Measurement of Attitudes for Systems Engineering, Systems Thinking, and Design Thinking

Abstract

Systems engineering, systems thinking, and design thinking are frameworks for understanding complex problems and developing effective, holistic solutions. Each framework is comprised of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that affect the design of products, systems, and services. In this dissertation, we explore the assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that define systems engineering, systems thinking, and design thinking, and compare them using a mixed methods approach. This dissertation also explores the existence and definition of systems design thinking—an integrated framework for systems engineering, systems thinking, and design thinking—along with the development of the Systems Design Thinking Scale. The Systems Design Thinking Scale is a 5-point Likert scale survey that measures attitudes about systems engineering, systems thinking, and design thinking, and is used to provide insight about potential relationships between these attitudes. Such a scale may be used for categorizing individuals based on these attitudes, which could be useful for informing teaming and other management decisions in design organizations.

The development of the Systems Design Thinking Scale in this dissertation was conducted as follows. First, thematic analysis of the systems engineering, systems thinking, and design thinking literature was used to generate codes that reflect core assumptions, concepts, values, and practices of each framework. These codes were then compiled into a systems design thinking codebook, and used to analyze data from semi-structured interviews with experienced systems engineers who were also recognized as strong systems thinkers by a technical leader within their organization. Interview data was used to identify common attitudes reflecting systems engineering, systems thinking, and design thinking in practice, and to generate hypotheses about how the frameworks are related. These attitudes were represented as statements on a 5-point Likert scale and distributed to a diverse sample of engineers and designers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to determine how well the attitudes reflected systems engineering, systems thinking, and design thinking; and to test the hypothesized relationships between these frameworks quantitatively. Ethnography informs the research throughout. Findings suggest several nuances that distinguish systems engineering, systems thinking, and design thinking. Findings also suggest that systems thinking attitudes exist within both systems engineering and design thinking frameworks. Results from the factor analyses suggests that systems engineering and design thinking attitudes are independent, and individuals may have systems engineering attitudes, design thinking attitudes, or both. A higher correlation between these attitudes is observed for experts in engineering design.

The final version of the scale is a 9-item questionnaire about systems engineering and design thinking attitudes. An exploratory study for validating the scale is described, in which correlations between scale scores and performance on analytical reasoning and divergent thinking tasks are examined. While no significant correlation was observed between the subscales and performance on the analytical reasoning task, some correlation between the design thinking subscale and divergent thinking measure suggests that the Systems Design Thinking Scale may be useful for predicting certain behaviors. Further validation through gamification and other opportunities for future work are discussed.