那么你觉得你能辩得出，地狱间的天堂，苦痛下的蓝天？
Updates from system thinking course
怪兽的灵感在我看到这一团密封在塑料袋里的树叶团时产生的。我觉得塑料的树叶毛刺刺的，让人能够立刻联想到森林当中最不想触碰的那些植物。
我在事后的解释是夏天的时候我算是被蚊子给咬怕了，所以这一团树叶就能让我想起成群的蚊子躲在树丛里的感觉，让人有点毛骨悚然。
我在树叶之间缠绕了丝带，以及一些毛茸茸的铁丝带挂着塑料球，就像蚊子的触角一样。
两部分，一个缠绕了绳子的面具，和一团气球，里面包裹着一束干花。我对内部的干花的理解，有点像一个邪恶的秘密，或者想要被藏匿的信念。被气球包裹着。所以我加了更多的‘保护’，比如外层的黑色绳网，缠绕着黑丝带，最后还添加了两个垃圾袋薄膜，来达到隐藏内部干花的效果。
“If Our world was not ready for the pandemics, what can we do about it? How do we/our communities recover from pandemics?
This question is that guiding question push me forward in the IP project. Double H is about the health of human community, and we are trying figure out what we can do as nobody can keep out of this affair. People with same purpose gathered with their sense of mission. Teen-Manage is form by the people who want to solve online learning and online collaboration hardship. And toward the topic, we have generated several ideas to work it out.
今年新春期间，国内开展远程办公的企业超过1800万家，远程办公人员超过3亿人。公开资料显示，全国共有7亿多工作人口，这意味着，有着半数中国工作人口参与了这场远程办公体验。在美国，也已经有超过80%的企业引入了远程办公软件。这意味着，「远程办公」这种模式已经被企业的大多数员工体验过了。这样一场浩大的线上办公实验使这种模式的优势也显露了出来，
More than 18 million enterprises and more than 300 million people are working remotely in China this Spring. According to public records, there are more than 700 million working people nationwide, which means that half of China’s working population has participated in this telecommuting experience. In the United States, more than 80 percent of businesses have introduced telecommuting. This means that the “telecommuting” model has been experienced by most employees in the enterprise.Such a large online office experiment makes the advantages of this mode also revealed.
From researching online, we find out that millions of people already taking remote working online. Since 2020 March, people notice that the pandemic won’t be end in short period, or it just a beginning. Online working is a big trending before the pandemic, and the Covid-19 drag nations into this big experiment.
Many questions will jumped out after this: “If the remote working shows really successful, are going to work online after the pandemic?” or “What is pro and con of working online?”.
We took a estimate on the pandemic, the remote working will be a tide, that every organization should try out, whether you’re school, or company, or small group. This is the time to change the conservative mindset. We think this is a great opportunity to make some attempt on this.
The product that every team member want to reach is a platform that can help online collaborators works fluently. Everyone sense that their is not really much online collaboration tools that helps us to work, or in the other way, we want to build one that may solve the most cooperation difficulty.
Afterwards we generated our mission and vision:
通过高中生的视角参与迭代slashme（一个线上合作平台），使其对于青少年项目管理更友好。
Iterating Slashme (an online cooperation platform) from the perspective of high school students, to make it more youth project management friendly.
帮助异时异地的青少年团队展开高效线上合作。
Help teenagers in different places to carry out effective online cooperation.
As you can see, we’ve aware that the perspective of teenage is our merit, and this is the reason of naming ourselves: “Teen(ager)-Manage(ment)”
The strategy of solving a question is listed in the image below. We used the defend in the attack, which means we solve the problem with discovering, in sum, we improve the problem.
For clear cut the problem, we’ve started with ourselves, the issue that we have need to face every day. Because as the user of our product, We made the empathy maps for conjecture users mindset.
Bold represent the part we are going to give solution.
But the data from ourselves can not represent the group of teenager, we need to find and collect more effective data to move on the next step. So we have a range around MSA survey:
From the information that we have gathered in preamble, the most significant problem shows of the interaction during the meeting. Last two graph is about the platform tools using and the functions, the highest column of “the difficulty faced during the collaboration” is the less communication, this turn out to be to top of feedback we gave to Slash Me in after, and ” the mission of “Help teenagers in different places to carry out effective online cooperation.” is the describe of the problem. We wish that without the low efficiency meetings(voice calls). People are able to collaborate without straight “voice talking” to each other, but by using our tools, the feedback from each other can be delivered.
Thus, we interpret the information we’ve gathered, we noticed that the key to solve the problem is to make sure by using our tool, user can interact with each other in any necessary situation, without having a voice call, this turn out to be the most important job in our after project.
Since we have finished every preparation before doing something real, we sink in to a moment of “don’t know what to do”.
In the beginning of the project we were run for a product the created by our own, but soon we figure out we don’t have the ability to create a platform or a webpage, and this is not our strong side.
And then, I’ve participate the publish conference of Slash Me, A platform of collaboration introduced by Kate Yang in our IP project. I contacted with Fiona (one of founder of Slash Me), and explained the willingness of provide a perspective of teenager, the partnership between Teen Manage to Slash Me started that day.
After we’ve been familiar with Slash Me, we took several zoom meeting with the Fiona , we wrote our feedback sheet to them. In the document, we have mainly focus on the feedback and scenes that happened mostly in online collaboration.
We’ve summarized the often feedback people used in collaboration, and sort it into a specific functionality in Slash Me. We expect that have the proper feedback give to people on time, a team could collaborate with each other fluently
and we summarized the every necessary situations that happened in our daily collaboration routine, corresponded the interpretation we have in the previous text.
Since we’ve working epidemic, and the club purpose of leadership has changed. The One Up Design Group paused for working online. I assume there is some problem with myself and to assign a club online, I never did this kind of business before. I really want to recover the club to the atmosphere last semester, but it seems much harder during social distancing
The main issue I’ve to solve is, I do not know what design topic I want to work on, during the epidemic, and collaborate with people. To be honest, I was kind of listless with social distancing. Even though I was lack of motivation on design. I tried to think all night to generate an idea, a topic that everyone can works on.
Unfortunately, I did not come up with any idea, so the club was lied idle for long.
In order to make a plan out, I’ve used system thinking tools for a solution. I’ve discussed with my teammates first, and received few of feedbacks:
After the discussion, I moved towards more systematic analyze. The CLD(Casual Loop Diagram), which I’ve used at the previous post, to demonstrate the connections between the elements.
I started to draw the graph with two key elements: “Club closed” and “Club start to run”, trying to do some connections between them. While after I finished the graph. The point of the graph is the “Balancing Loop” in the middle. During that night, I was keep thinking about how I gonna come up with an idea, but more I think, more stress I obtained.
On the next step, I’ve used Mental Model to reflect my mental behavior how I interpret the observable experiences. Base on the ladder of Mental Model, climb from the current experience to the action I should take.
Before I started to write the post, I’ve already came out with a solution and taken the action. So I have a complete ladder, which shows a example of using this:
By using the mental model, start from the base of the ladder, I have analyzed my interpretation to the “data”, and the assumptions I’ve made. In the Conclusion: My club mates do not have passion on the club, or they have no time to work on another task, the club. We’re stucked with no topic to go.
Now I looked into the conclusion I’ve made, noticed I created many wrong assumptions. People never know what they’re thinking if they do no reflect on their mental. I think the Mental Model is quite helpful for people having trouble and facing the problems.
Our Population in China is having the greatest number for a long time. 2019, China’s population is over 1.4 billion and with 0.39% rate of increase. the well-known birth control in the country is started in 70’s and rapidly lowered the fertility rate and the increase of population, but the crisis which will come after the overwhelming excess of population, the “Aging of China”. the prospects given by OPCS(Office of Population Census Surveys) shows that, if the country growing as still, the aging of China will be a problem lying in the front.
I’m a student from the course of system thinking, yet we decided to have a research under the iceberg under the data, and figure out why the population growth like these.
China total population over time(1978 to 2014)
we can see that the graph demonstrated the fertility rate shows that the climax of population in time is around 1965, having the rate of 6.385, and after that, the fertility rate went down to 2.5 during 1965 to 1995, a pick up of population is about 1980, and continue to fall to 1995, and shows a rate of rising gradually till present days.
Birth Control Policy (family Planning/One Child Policy)
By researching that the story behind the decreasing came after the climax is the birth control policy appeared in China. Yanchu Ma proposed a article about arguing the population in the country and the idea of birth control in 1957. 1962, a serious protocol of the Central Committee and the State Council. Until the 1964, which year the Family Planning Committee was formed, and the policy started to operate at the very first time. At that time, 1/5 of village down the country side were forced to running the new policy. And that is exactly the reason that we see the decreasing of fertility rate.
After the policy was built, the strength of the control became more and more harsh. In 1973, Family Planning was already counted as a national policy, and claimed that a pair can only have two child, having one child is the best. In 1980, the control of policy’s requirement down to one child per pair, which is as known as the One Child Policy.
This explained that the fertility rate’s decreasing in the graph: it once stopped at 1980, around 2.5 birth rate, which is close to the limits of 2 child policy, and after that, 1 child policy published, population was declined again, almost reached the 1.5 line.
After the prominent work of the one child policy, government started to notice that if the country’s fertility rate keeping going down, the decreasing of new child will not be given the birth, and the country will face another huge problem, the aging of the country. the percentile of 65+ population will take more portion in the population, they need retirement, require for caring. The working power with no new blood boost in, the entire country will enter a old age.
So, One Child Policy is not a long term project, once the fertility got controlled, government need to open the policy for family planning. around 2010, 1.2 Child policy published, and then 1.5(1.5 means if one of the pairs is from a one child family, the family can have 2 children)
Finally, in January, 1 2016, the universal two-child policy published, and ended the two score and 1 decade birth control period, but the controversial policy in the China is no longer is still exist, people are still waiting for maybe the “three-child policy” or no policy for birth control.
Today is April in 2020, as the previous mentioned, the prediction of 2055 in China, the population is still a big problem. Even though for now the increasing rate seems fine, China still have 0.39% population growing. But in the perspective from the long term trending, the increasing will no longer be it. If China, a colossus with 1.4 billion population, started to losing the fertility rate really quickly, then the aged group in the population will stand in a very dangerous position in the way.
Let’s say that if we can analyze the country and government a system, figure out the principle behind it, then we shall predict what will happen in the future
CLD (Casual Loop Diagram)
The balancing loop is the tools using to modeling the appearance during 1965 to 2016. as the definition of balancing loop, an element in a system, will be balanced by a mechanics in the loop. if the element get over the predicting value, or lower than, the balancing loop will try to balance the value to the most suitable one.
so every time the population increased or decreased, the birth control(by the government) will balance the increase or decrease to normal. For instance, in 1965, overwhelmed population and the striking number of 6.3 of birth rate made the Chinese government realized that the population will destroy the country if it keep increasing without intervene, then the family planning kicked in, balanced the population quickly.
Delay
But in the title of analyzing the population in a country, China spent 15 years to restrain the increasing population(from 1964 to 1980), this is a delay in the system. Delay in population control is nonnegligible. the policy will not remove thousand of population instantly, but for decades. A full-fledged policy need time left to test it. For birth controlling, 5 decades over, the aging of population still exist, this is the hardest part for a long-delayed balancing loop, government need years to re-amend the policy.
After those analyzes, we figure out how the government control the population. the system of balancing loop will keep adjust the input over time, until the population goes fine. And the delay in the system, is the biggest problem that makes the balancing tough to handle. Although the prediction made the aging of China, the balancing shall prevent it before happen.
Consider with more comprehensive analyze
But the elements we have include or considered is enough, for analyze the population, there are many factors that can influence the population. War, famine, policy, even being wealthy can impact on the population.
From observe the trending on the graphs, we can see the GDP of China is upgoing quickly since 2000, and in the contrast, the fertility rate is falling quick falling since 1960. In math, we can call two data group “negative correlation”. Which means, the growth of GDP will cause a edgrowth of fertility rate.
If we only consider the data from 1960 to 2018, the correlation can be defined as negative. However, the relationships between population and other factor can not be listed detailed right here, but the more factor you have, the more of your diagram’s accuracy will contained
I think there is no way that somebody can run every elements that influence the population, nobody can. So to be much detailed is not the way out. Otherwise, people can tell the future.
Bring the big picture view of problem
To analyze the population, I pretty much sure that you’re not gonna success with list every possibility. Thus, why don’t we zoom out, and use a more universal tools?
Archetypes is the phenomenon that people observed and summarized from common systems. We can use the archetypes that apply to our system and use the common solution to describe it.
After viewed the archetypes, I decide to use “The Limits of Success/Growth” to describe the phenomenon of the population in a country.
Sample Limits to Success Behavior Over Time
The reason why I decide to use this diagram, is that from my observe of population, countries tend to approach to the a steady ratio of fertility rate at last. To understand the phenomenon of limits to the growth, we can look in to the example of it.
The example in the limits to the success is that a company that seal the fish started to collecting wealth in the beginning, they catch fishes from the ocean, and use the money of sealing the fish to expand their shipments. The scale of the company growth and growth until they reached the limits of success, they can’t get more fish from the ocean, because the total amount of fish can not satisfy them.
This can be apply to the country population as well. The total amount of resources on the mainland is limited, that could only support such amount of population to live. As long as the population reach the limit, the number will not increase anymore.
I apply the idea to the CLD sample of the archetype, then I have this:
The total amount of resources will supply the population in a country. In fact, the total resources is limited, so the population will finally started to be balance by the lack of resource.
There is an exception right here, that is the conversion rate of resources, or the utility ratio of power. People can only use their body effort to farm the land to get cereals. But as long as the invention of machines, locomotive steam machines, and the electricity. We can use less effort to generate more power. Revolution can bring population boom in a short period.
Back to the China: What can China government do?
The Leverage Action is the point that you can put the less effort in a system to exchange for the maximal change to the system. Just like an leverage. If we’re able to find the most efficient leverage point in the population system, then we simply solve the problem.
So the leverage action that the archetype of The limits of growth gave us the point below:
“This archetype is best addressed by mapping out the interactions of the growth loops, resource stocks, and potential limiters to growth in the future before problems arise. In the case of overfishing, this may include slowing down growth in the short term in order for fishing stocks to recover. Or in the case of an economy’s dependence on oil, the solution may be to to decouple the limiting factor from the system itself by transitioning to alternative energy sources.”
(source from:https://systemsandus.com/archetypes/limits-to-growth/)
The Two way that archetypes lead the solution, is to stop the overusing the resource in the system, to let it to recover. If China is going to take the strategy, they should limit people from overmining the ores, fishing the fishes. This is the policy of all the developed country are doing. Slow down the exploit and prepare for the long term. I’m pretty sure the China government must planning on this.
And second strategy is to jump out of the factor that limit the system, or in the other way: do something revolutionary. We can discover a new field of resource to use, then the loop of limitation won’t limit us. New type of energy is still hot topic in scientific research. Clear energy, which can produce zero emissions, is the only way out to save a country