What is Systems Design?
The short answer is that “systems design is concerned with the combination, integration, and interaction between and within parts, processes, people, or perspectives and necessitates trade-offs between these elements to meet a demand unmet by a basic product”
For those that are unsatisfied or still want more with respect to the above answer, please read on as we dive into examples and break down this topic a little more. We’ll also return to and parse through this short answer in Part 2.
But first, let’s talk about snow. Don’t worry, there’s a reason for this.
I’m originally from Canada and I enjoy downhill skiing. This gives me a higher than passing interest in snow. On an annual basis, I might use 10 or more terms to describe different snow conditions. I use terms like “pebbles”, “icy”, “fluffy”, “mashed potatoes”, “firm,” “powder”, “flakey”, “slushy” and alternate terms to define what others might just call “snow.” If you are from a place where it snows every year, you probably have a few, or many, terms yourself. If this is your first winter and you recently experienced your first winter blizzard, you might call that stuff falling from the sky “snow” and use just one term. After a couple of blizzards, you might begin to distinguish the types of snow based on how well you can make a snowman or snowwoman, or sled down a hill (e.g. “sticky”, “hard”, “slick”).
Native Canadians, among them the Inuit people, care about snow even more than I do. And they should! Their current or historic homes (i.e. igloos) depend on precise conditions to hold the ice or snow together. When you are living in a snow house, the snow temperature, density, weight, thickness, consistency, and many other factors are very much on your mind so your home doesn’t collapse during the night. Popular references suggest 52 different terms are used by the Inuit to describe ice and snow in the various conditions. Of course, linguists and anthropologists might argue that number is too high or too low, but what’s important is that there are a lot of terms for snow.
When it comes to the word “system,” we have the exact opposite problem as the Inuit. The word system is used, reused, and even abused in numerous ways, sometimes causing more confusion than clarity. What’s more, as technology has advanced and diversified into countless new and refined domains, fields, and application areas, we haven’t invented new words to describe the processes, outcomes, and results. In my opinion, we should adopt many more words to distinguish what we mean when our society uses the word system. For example, we often call a process a system, a product a system, a method a system, an organization a system, an algorithm a system, a computer a system, a framework a system, a mechanism a system, the internet a system, software a system, hardware a system, an idea a system, a list a system, and on and on and on.
Some might argue we should just use the first of the two words in the above word-pair examples. That’s a start, however, there is something we still seek to communicate when we default to the word system in our speech and writing. We use it more like an adjective – a description word – to suggest something that may exhibit features of 1) complexity or extensive interdependence, 2) multiple interacting components, 3) unknown, undefinable, or unpredictable attributes, 4) unstable, varying, or evolving conditions and parameters, 5) responsiveness, resilience, or adaptability, 6) integrated human perspectives, 7) emergent behavior, 8) internal consistency or coherence, and many other characteristics suggested, or alluded to, by the word system. Wow. That’s a lot of stuff we might be hinting at.
To illustrate this even further, below is a small sample of uses of the word system (with emphasis on the words “small sample”). Skim over them and ask yourself what the word system is really referring too in each one:
• Immune System
• Dewey Decimal System
• The Progressive Tax System
• System of Equations
• The Buddy System
• Sewer System
• Patent System
• A Belief System
• Robotic System
• Operating System
• Indian River System
• Defensive System
• System of Units
• Reward System
• Vaccine Delivery System
• Phonetic System
• Storm/Weather System
• The Democratic System
• Solar System
• Control System
• Note-taking System
• Embedded System
• Security System
• Dynamical Systems
• Information Systems
• Verbal System Analysis
• Sound System
• Healthcare System
• Value System
• Encryption System
• The Two-Party System
• Coordinate System
• Justice System
In case you very quickly skimmed over the above list, I want to pick out just three to illustrate a point. We all likely know that the “Dewey Decimal System” is a way to categorize book topics and is useful for libraries to organize their shelves and thousands of physical copies. It’s rather different than a “Weather System” where temperature, humidity, wind, time of year, latitude, elevation, and many other factors come together to cause some potentially extreme weather results. Finally, a “Security System” might have locks, safes, keys, fingerprint readers, human guards, and many other things. These three systems are clearly different from each other and yet they’re all called systems.
Therefore, if you took another look at the above list and took some time to think about them, you might agree that these systems really are different in nature. Yes, there are some commonalities. You might propose that many are complex (but not all). Or that many require agreement between people and stakeholders (but not all). Or that many require significant organization and coordination between their parts (but not all).
However, you also likely agree that the word system, as we know and use it, is still the best word choice for many or all of these different entities. What’s a better name than “Solar System”? It’s hard to come up with one. A better option than “Operating System” for computers? Equally challenging. What about our “Healthcare System”? Nope, that one will stick around for a while. We thus find ourselves stuck in a corner requiring all of us to understand the fine nuances and differences when we use the word system.
In my opinion, we’d love to discriminate between the various attributes and characteristics of these systems and do try by using the adjectives in front of most of these examples, but these generally only define the domain and do not tell us as much as we might prefer about the true nature of these systems.
As much as I would love 52 or more words to help us understand the different structures, capabilities, and characteristics of the different systems we are all a part of, use, and design, we’ll have to live with this limitation in the near future.
Still, we can explore general principles that span most of the uses of the word system and use this to further define the answer to the title question, What is Systems Design, in the follow-up Part 2. We’ll return to the definition at the top of this article, explore what systems design is not (a useful exercise), and consider additional examples to better understand this concept.
