Research and Systems Thinking

I came across an article today that demonstrated a systems thinking approach to problem solving and providing research to help determine the impacts of potential action.  In this case, the researchers studied a downstream effect of Internet privacy restrictions on online advertising.  Rather than simply studying the information available to advertisers, the researchers inquired about the consequences of such restrictions.

The results of the study showed a decrease of up to 65% in effectiveness for the online advertisements.  The common banner advertisements were more affected by privacy restrictions than the larger, and more obtrusive, advertisements.  Looking at this from a systems thinking perspective, restrictions in the consumer data made available to web advertisers resulted in less affective advertisements and will lead to a push to larger and more obtrusive advertisements in order to apply affective online marketing campaigns.  What this means is attempts to limit the data tracked and available to online advertisers could lead to more obtrusive advertisements thus negatively impacting the user experience on the website.

We must then decide if the privacy gained through the restriction of the data is worth the negative user experience.  It may be a good trade-off but we must first understand all of the implications of this action.  We must understand the system to hypothesize the results of any change to the system.  This systems thinking approach will result in better long-term decisions.