99% of stakeholder "ideas" is just copying a feature they saw on a competitor's product. And the features they notice most are the ones that yell at their users the loudest. Now all software (not just consumer apps, but also metrics dashboards) yells at you, and trains you to attend to its yelling.

Current Status

Chasing the sunset: Buttercup Festival 3-366

back the kickstarter now, and surprise future you with a lovely treat!

8 more days of kickstarter, day 3 of countdown songs! dirty blonde started as a harp-accompanied piece in 2020, and it was finished in 2023 in a co-write with the amazing @patwhoisnice.bsky.social and purser :-) www.kickstarter.com/projects/cop...

Design designs. Dispositions disposition.

Perennial reminder that our tools construct us as subjects. Designing a tool REQUIRES making decisions that privilege some applications over others. Every usable technology has a path of least resistance (tasks/outcomes for which it's most suited) and will naturally draw you to those outcomes.

“we should remember that we can never wholly separate the human and the mechanical problem. This would seem too obvious to mention if we did not so often see that separation being made.” — Mary Parker Follett, Development of Business Management, 1925 in

Hello, bluesky.... it's been a minute but I have some exciting news for the new year :) youtu.be/bU_-OhxcFVI?...

If we accept that building good software requires many disciplines to come together, then "what's the ROI of UX?" is a meaningless question. When we attempt to organize based solely on "doing only the important work," categorizing "important" becomes politics, and you have to fight with politics.

This was a wonderful discussion — thank you @yvonnezlam.bsky.social and @johncutle.fish and everyone who participated! A big point of resonance is how much mutual appreciation there is for systems community!

This is a *free* 150 page chapbook that explores systems, system design and software architecture. And it’s … actually *good*??? Well, at least all the parts where I weave in this systems and design community’s insights are good. 😊

One of the highlights of 2025 for me? Someone saying “this was a really good read! i especially like the chaotic layout of the book 😂” about my Technical Decisions chapbook Because so true, but also… so not AI in its human quirks 😅 ruthmalan.com/Leadership/2...

Wow, this is important and practical research. *And some call this a strawman argument.

It’s a vividly written, thought-provoking newsletter, engaging thoughtfully with the challenges we face in product design and related:

First #PapersInSystems discussion of 2026: Monday, January 5, 1-2PM Eastern Time (US/Canada): "20 Things I Learned As A Systems (Over) Thinker" by @johncutle.fish Here: www.linkedin.com/posts/johnpc... Discussion will be led by @yvonnezlam.bsky.social Info/enroll: ti.to/bredemeyer/c...

Copeland James is crowdfunding to bring this loveliness into the world. Of course, in addition to Copeland’s everlasting gratitude, there’s mine. If you’ve ever thought “I’d like to buy ruth coffee,” here’s a way (pay it forward a gen).

Good enough wins because of what you are able to treat as externalities

The last issue of the year, where I talk about what's on a lot of people's minds: what they can try to do to stop their 2026 from being like their 2025. Unfortunately, the answer is not as simple as "try twice as hard." Against systemic causes, even the power of spite can only get you so far.

The Big Idea is short bursts of daily practice, sketching and writing in a Systems Adventure Journal. Through these practices and related reflections, we learn about systems, and as we turn our focus to particular situations, systems become a partner in our learning journey.

Here’s a demo of one of the songs that will be on the album, as well as testimonials I have received from my song commission work! If you would like to commission a song and help fund this album project, you can learn more here :) www.kickstarter.com/projects/cop...

Safety Nerds and @ruthmalan.bsky.social, you might be interested in the paper that @kissane.myatproto.social refers to: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Love this picture from Ray Ison’s book. The people in the system bring their own personal history of thinking and understanding.

Give future you a lovely gift! (Help fund recording expenses now, get digital download later. Be part of making something lovely happen.)

"I use the word system to refer to any collection of elements that, through preferential interactions between them, generate a boundary with respect to other elements with which they can also interact in such a way that a totality results" -- Humberto Maturana

Birds: Buttecup Festival 3-356

The mossy stream: Buttercup Festival 3-358

Points to CLDs by @hibri.net, @chrissimon.au

The first one I added was @spydergrrl.bsky.social's Workshop Alchemy. The cool thing about a workshop is it's just a meeting with rules. Tanya gives great advice for implementing rules that make your meetings productive (instead of time wasters for everyone concerned) and making decisions stick.

I'm 4 days late, but Ruth's Advent(ure) in System Seeing is a brilliant exploration of systems thinking for beginners or experts, and you can catch up easily.

“Zines are back, baby” — @spavel.bsky.social

Rich Pictures are sketches of situations that include people in swirls of interactions. They’re not in any “standardized” format, and they don’t have “analytical” features like numbers on interactions…They are “earlier” than Domain Stories. But their very informality is useful in exploring the space

Day 3 #AdventOfSystemSeeing I’ll tap off on Advent(ure) of System Seeing self-boosts as we get further into it, but for now it’s still early days, and there’s a chance folk would still like to hear that there’s a Systemsy advent(ure) :) Today: Futures Wheel

Specifically: Bainbridge (Ironies of Automation) and Naur (Programming as Theory Building)

This one is fascinating…still think about a recent post about bikes and science… www.cbc.ca/news/science... > In reality, we know precious little about how the bicycle actually works, beyond the basic mechanics of "pedal turns gear that turns wheel."

My colleague and I have signed up, see you there!

We’re discussing this classic today. The #PapersInSystems community is a lovely community to have a focused conversation with — the discussions draw on so much experience, and draw in connections to other work.

For those who want a systems focused advent to wind up the year, it’s begun! Daily posts will refresh here: www.ruthmalan.com/Advent.html And will be posted to the page for the day (which will also hold notes and links to work people share here or on their own blog, etc.). #AdventOfSystemSeeing

'Drawing [isn’t] just for “artists” [..]. Think of it as a way of observing the world and learning' — Anne Quito #AdventOfSystemSeeing Day 1: Draw a Bicycle (and sketch a key mechanism) www.ruthmalan.com/Advent/2025/...

Today is the most useful (to others) day to reshare this, to reach those who might be interested in joining the systems seeing advent(ure) together. They can join any time, but starting in sync adds to the participative spirit of it.

If you are new to the #AdventOfSystemSeeing, do check out the About page: www.ruthmalan.com/Advent/About... It links to the prompt books from the past three years, so you can look at examples. And it links to some examples of work done.

Excited that my latest talk at the Complexity Lounge is now on YouTube. Titled "Humberto Maturana’s Time: Living in the Present," this talk explores Maturana's 2 modalities of time. This was a great project with new insights gained into how Maturana understood time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AHY...

December in systems: December 1

Indigenous communities began to paint these sacred, polychromatic murals almost 6,000 years ago. “But it didn’t stop there,” she said. ... "they continued to create these visual manuscripts for more than 4,000 years." news.txst.edu/research-and...

The next #PapersInSystems discussion is Monday Dec 1, 1-2pm Eastern, Josh Reynolds will lead, and the paper is "The Architecture of Complexity" by Herbert Simon. More info/sign up (free of course): ti.to/bredemeyer/a...

Looking for a technical book for a friend? Or for yourself? …Maybe even my book iOS Unit Testing by Example? Now's your chance to snag a deal at pragprog.com! Check out with discount code "save50" Do it while you can, offer ends December 1

There’s another Software Architecture Humble Bundle, this time with books from Pearson. www.humblebundle.com/books/softwa...

We've known about this for quite a while, but we haven't done enough about it: Open Source Developers Are Exhausted, Unpaid, and Ready to Walk Away

just in case nobody has done it before

I really l love it. The flute and the percussion. 🎶