Feedback, Social Systems, and Design Thinking - A Practical Implication

Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, the concept of feedback is usually tied with control (or regulation); positive or negative feedback is often utilized to regulate the behavior of systems. In social systems, we use feedback for many purposes; regulation is one, interpretation, integration, and differentiation and learning are others. In engineering, feedback is an important part of system design. In social systems, feedback can be used as an important aspect of system design; and this is the concept we are going to explore in this paper. Before getting to the specific example, we’ll briefly explore different types of feedback, their relationship with different systems methodologies, and an overview of the Systems Dynamics methodology that has feedback loops as its building block. This background will help us examine the design thinking considerations we need to take into account when dealing with social systems.