Systems Oriented Design

Birger Sevaldson

Birger Sevaldson is professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. He is member of the OCEAN design research association. He is trained as an interior architect and furniture designer and he has been practicing in various fields of design, including architecture and interior design, furniture design, industrial design and art based projects. He has a PhD in creative design computing and has been researching systems thinking in design for the last ten years. He is central in the development of Systems Oriented Design and his research focus is to develop systems oriented design thinking and practice for meeting the increased challenges of globalisation and the need for sustainability.  He publishes in various themes including Systems Oriented Design, creativity,  and research by design.

Birger Sevaldson has founded this website and he has coined the term Systems Oriented Design and leads the development of this research area at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

http://www.birger-sevaldson.no/

http://www.ocean-designresearch.net

 Michael Hensel

Michael U. Hensel is an architect, researcher and writer. He is Professor for Research by Design at AHO – the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, founding member and secretary of OCEAN Research and Design Network reg. Association, board member of BIONIS – the Biomimetics Network for Industrial Sustainability, editorial board member of AD Wiley and JBE – Journal for Bionic Engineering (Elsevier Scientific Press). He has published, lectured, taught and exhibited world-wide.

Michael Hensel is a long term collaborator on the development of Systems Oriented Design within the context of OCEAN and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

Peter Coughlan

Peter Coughlan, Ph.D., is a partner at IDEO, a global design and innovation consultancy. Peter is a founder of IDEO's transformation practice, which uses a design thinking approach to help clients with ‑systemic change informed by customer needs. Peter has worked in a range of different industries and organizations of differing stages of maturity, from hospital systems to high-tech startups. Through his client work and teaching, he has recently begun to deepen his exploration of the integration of design thinking and systems thinking.

Peter Jones

Dr. Jones is associate professor at Toronto's OCAD University, where he is a senior fellow of the Strategic Innovation Lab and teaches in the Strategic Foresight and Innovation graduate program. He is managing partner of Dialogic Design International, an organizational and strategic design consultancy he founded in 2007. Peter is a board member of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras, the organization founded by Dr. Aleco Christakis, which promotes the practice and science of dialogic design for democratic, collaborative action for socially complex problem systems. He started and facilitates the Toronto-based educational and consultative community of practice known as Design with Dialogue.

Peter also founded and leads Redesign, Inc. an innovation research company now based in Toronto. Redesign conducts ethnographic and design research to guide innovations consistent with advancing systemic change in organizations, social systems and markets. Peter has designed leading information resources used in scientific, legal, and medical practice, and conducts ethnographic and design research to help people understand the impact of innovations that will impact these fields and change practice.

Peter's books, papers and online work are listed at designdialogues.com. He maintains active communities and resources at:

designforcare.com Healthcare design book community designwithdialogue.com Online community for DwD practice globalagoras.org Agoras Institute site transformationdialogues.com Online community for Structured Dialogic Design practice

Twitter: @redesign @globalagoras @designforcare

Harold Nelson

Dr. Harold Nelson is a visiting scholar in the School of Computer Science at the University of Montana. He was the 2009-2010 Nierenberg Distinguished Professor of Design in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He was an affiliated Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington and has recently worked in research for the NSF funded center for Learning in Informal and Formal Environments at the University of Washington, Stanford University and SRI.

He is a past-president and a trustee of the International Society for Systems Science. For over twelve years Dr. Nelson was the head of the Graduate Programs in Whole Systems Design at Antioch University. He is also the co-founding Director and President of the Advanced Design Institute, a not-for-profit. He is the owner of the design consulting firm, Harold Nelson, LLC. A licensed architect in California, Dr. Nelson worked for several years as an assistant regional architect for Region Five of the U.S. Forest Service.

As a consultant, Dr. Nelson has worked with a variety of organizations, including: non-profits and corporations, state and federal agencies, international governments, and the United Nations, and continues to work as an educator, consultant, and researcher in the field of organizational systems design where he brings both design thinking and systems science to the study of organizations and innovation.

Dr. Nelson received his Ph.D. in Social Systems Design, graduating with distinction, from the University of California at Berkeley. He received his Master of Architecture degree from U.C. Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Montana State University. Dr. Nelson studied architecture at the Technical University in Helsinki, Finland where in addition he studied ceramic design at the Athenaeum Fine Arts Academy.

In 2004, “The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World; Foundations and Fundamentals of Design Competence”, a book co-authored with Dr. Erik Stolterman, received the Outstanding Book of the Year award from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology.

Colleen Ponto

Colleen F. Ponto, Ed.D. Ph: 425-489-0549 Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Colleen Ponto, Ed.D., teaches at Seattle University where she is a core faculty member of the Organization Systems Renewal (OSR) Graduate Program, a program in the design and leadership of systemic organizational change. She also teaches at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute which offers an MBA in Sustainable Systems where she serves as adjunct faculty. Systems thinking is at the heart of Colleen’s teaching and consulting and she specializes in helping clients develop their systems thinking skills in order to design and realize their preferred future. Colleen also leads a nonprofit organization in her community dedicated to environmental education. She recently co-authored her first book, Sustainable Tomorrow: A Teachers’ Guidebook for Applying Systems Thinking to Environmental Education Curricula for Grades 9-12. Before becoming a professor and consultant, Colleen worked as a pulp and paper engineer and production manager for the Weyerhaeuser Paper Company at the Everett Kraft Pulp Mill. She received her doctorate in Educational Leadership from Seattle University, her master’s degree in Whole Systems Design from Antioch University Seattle, and her bachelor’s degree in Paper Science and Engineering from the University of Washington. She lives with her husband and three children near Seattle, Washington.