Sheryl Cababa on Systems Thinking for Social Change

The Informed Life

Sheryl Cababa is the Chief Strategy Officer of Substantial, an experience design consultancy based in Seattle. She’s the author of Closing the Loop, a new book about systems thinking in design. The book emphasizes the role designers can play as catalysts for social change, and that is the focus of our conversation.

Show notes

• Sheryl Cababa - LinkedIn
• Sheryl Cababa (@SherylCababa)
• Substantial
• University of Washington - Human Centered Design & Engineering
• Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers by Sheryl Cababa
• Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows
• The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge
• Peter Checkland
• Systems Thinking for Social Change: A Practical Guide to Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results, by David Peter Stroh
• Iceberg Model - Ecochallenge.org
• What is the STEEP analysis? - FourWeekMBA
• Revolution 1 by The Beatles
• UXLx - User Experience Lisbon
• Enterprise UX 2023

Rosenfeld Media provided a review copy of Sheryl’s book.
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Chapters

1. About Sheryl (00:01:21)

2. Combining design thinking and systems thinking (00:02:58)

3. Shortcomings of user-centered design (00:05:40)

4. Systems thinking (00:11:05)

5. Perception of agency (00:16:42)

6. Rethinking agency (00:25:51)

7. Overcoming scarcity mindset (00:32:59)

8. Conclusion (00:33:08)