Abstract for: A proposal of a holistic and human-centric system design approach for a beauty industry stimulation

This paper seeks to provide a novel approach to identify systemic leverage points on individual, business and demographic views and to develop a social solution to promote individual beauty in Japan. Our approach is leveraging a systems-approach to analyze three themes: (i) factors and bottlenecks restraining beauty industry’s further development and causes of current saturation, (ii) a hypothesis of social system solution based on user needs, and (iii) dynamics on increased number of beauty-sensed people and possible social economic benefit. The main findings are that normal individuals should have two hurdles to start behavior actions for his or her more beauty. One is an unclear criterion for start actions because beauty is subjective concept. The other is an issue on how to identify the effectiveness along with diverse personal requirements of beauty. Our systems-approach is a combination of design thinking for analyzing individual mental model, system thinking for a value chain hypothesis and system dynamics for analyzing the effectiveness. It should provide a holistic verification of a proposed solution, “Beauty checkup”. Our approach could serve as catalysts for a more unified study of design methodology for problem solutions on a complex system, containing mental, industrial and social viewpoints.