Designing Systemic-Thinking Tools Using Concept Maps: The Relevance of Visualizing Qualitative Data

Due to rapid changes in local, state, national, and worldwide environments, public managers face increasing challenges to fulfilling the purposes of their work. Systemic thinking is one way to support the management of complexity. The purpose of this design-based research project was to design, develop, and formatively assess one-page tools to support the systemic thinking of public managers. The research project was conducted in six phases comprising two cycles. In this chapter we describe a single phase of design-based research and focus on the use of concept maps as a qualitative data visualization tool. Concept maps were developed from data collected during interviews with six instructional designers and eight public managers. Visualizing the qualitative interview data allowed us to perceive aspects of teaching systemic thinking not available solely using traditional data analysis methods. The relevance of visualizing qualitative data stems from what those data provide: a deeper and more human explanation of the phenomena under study. Learning experience design was used as the conceptual framework for this study. Due to the multi-faceted nature of learning experience design, its utility as a conceptual framework was relevant to the bringing together of design thinking and systemic thinking to produce the learning tools and theoretical contributions.