Design thinking strategies for complex situations: COVID-19 in Western Australia and New South Wales

This paper outlines an argument for changing the foundation of design thinking practices to include causal feedback loops instead of primarily predicting futures using linear causal relations. The paper suggests for most real-world design situations the traditional linear causal perspective is insufficient and leads to lower value design outcomes. The authors propose instead designers address real-world complex design situations via design methods that include feedback loops, which require different design methods and tools. The discussion in the paper follows the understanding of systems researchers. The authors provide an example of the significant differences in outcomes using a comparative case study of government strategies in Western Australia and New South Wales to address COVID-19 and its adverse consequences including crime. The design of Western Australia’s strategies took into account feedback loops between factors. In contrast, New South Wales government strategies followed a traditional design approach based on linear causal relations without feedback loops similar to that used for long-term resource planning in hospitals. The Western Australian outcomes were significantly better than those of New South Wales in terms of infections, deaths, hospital resource management, and across economic and social benefits and this can be tied to the differences in design approach. The authors contend that in most real-world complex design contexts it is necessary for designers to move away from traditional design thinking based on linear causal relations and instead assume that all design thinking requires consideration of, and prediction of outcomes by, feedback loops between design factors.