Date: Sunday, 09/21/2026
Class: IMALR-GT-202
Name: Janice Vuong
System Thinking | Questions
- As you read about the eight different stakeholders, did you find yourself identifying or disagreeing with any of the positions? Did your relationship change as you read additional perspectives?
It was kind of a lot. Like stakeholder system group wise, but valid groups of systems. I will talk about #8 (System of sustainable agriculture, with long time horizons). At first I thought I was team #6 (Global food supply and Demand), initially my worldview that GMOs are supposed to help with a growing population. But reading further into #8, the importance of having diverse strain crops makes much more sense. For me, its hard to think about agriculture when not faces with it’s day-to-day. Like most consumers, we do not see the farms, we go to air-conditioned grocery stores. Where every thing is packaged, wrapped, sealed- free from blemishes.
Farming is hard, I do not doubt that. I guess it is still sort of an abstract concept to me. Like what am I supposed to do (???)
The fresh fruits at farmer markets are great! But it is hard to shop for every ingredient at farmer markets. Also it reminds me of tidbits of undergrad (business, blergh I studied Finance), like one of the reasons we we have stock/financial market, in the first place was because of farmers.
there a different “products” on the financial market
- stocks
- etfs
- futures
+ probably more but that isn’t the point of this blog post
anyways so futures is a type of product, and has their own market (the futures market). it was for farmers to lock in their crops prices, ensure buyers, so they would have a promise of payment = aka have money to eat, and be able to grow future season of crops. so like there are futures for basically all food crops (oil futures, rice futures, tulip futures — a terrible market crash in Amsterdam, and things like cotton too)
also i think it’s funny when someone messes up on r/wallstreetbets and gets their futures contract triggered— like wydm i have to pick up 50 tons of eggs 🔗 (???)
unlike stocks (numbers on a screen). futures are real
- Thinking about your own research and topic, have you encountered any systems? Any stakeholders?
Systems I think of about Balloons, with respect to parties and celebrations:
- Party Store Suppliers & Consumers (us, the general public)
- Social Media & Consumers
I think (or at least on my Instagram feed) it feels like every social media post about a celebration whether it is an engagement, to a baby shower, etc. There’s a lot of balloons. Like a lot?? so I am “elder” Gen-Z, but I do not remember going to birthday parties as a kid, and seeing balloon arch in my life, and now I feel like its just a standard thing in social media celebrations.
- BIG! Big displays of celebrations (balloon arch displays) for kid’s birthday parties, baby showers, weddings, bachelorettes, “LASIK” celebration*
*disclaimer, because my guilty pleasure is watching the Kardashians, there was an episode that Kris Jenner (the mom), threw an LASIK party for her youngest daughter, Kylie Jenner and it was a bunch of eyeball balloons
Also for every event (birthday, wedding, random party), they (the Kardashians) have like massive, massive, massive balloon installations (numerous arches, figures, a giant baby head inflated, etc). They also mention their event planner for each party.
- Event Planning & Consumers
I think to answer this question more deeply, I might make an ecosystems map (I think that, is still under Systems Thinking). Ecosystems mapping was something I learned in my Design Research class, everyone has me mapping (haha in a good way)!! Ironically in my Design Research class, there was no time to learn about Systems Thinking, so this is has gotten me in a loop learning cycle.
System Thinking | Diagrams
- Causal Loop Diagram (CLD)
I was so worried, because at first I could not figure out if I had a loop
and i stared at my unfinished loop for a solid 30 minutes and realized what kept me to repurchasing balloons (i like the sight of balloons), help me complete the loop
R+ | Reinforcing Behaviors |
B - | Balancing Behaviors |
| | | Delays |
* I am unsure if this bankruptcy qualifies as a delay, because yes— technically when I found out about the party city bankruptcy I was devastated (December 2024). So weird to walk into Staples, over this summer (2026), and found out they merged with Staples (???). And you can order online, view colors, types of balloon materials and do an online order for in-store pick-up?!
- Ecosystem Map (WIP)
work-in-progress
Research / Studio / Meeting w/Margaret (Program librarian)
I met with Margaret this afternoon (Monday, 09/21)! She was very patient with me, and our session was great! I had wrote in the gCal invite that I needed help in narrowing down my scope for inflatables in regards to balloons. It has been awhile since I navigated a database, and it was helpful to see “inside Margaret’s brain” on how she uses the numerous databases that NYU has available to help me search about balloons. She also pasted links every time, we went to a different database, to get more information/hit a roadblock (there was like 3 different databases in this case), and seeing how she uses search terms.
Sometimes there were roadblocks, so we went into Google Scholar instead. I had totally forgotten about Google Scholar, so that was a good reminder!
Oh! I even requested an inter-library loan for an journal!! That was helpful to learn
I used to work in a library (public library) during high school as a page, and sometimes helped with processing inter-library loans. So I always saw the back-end, but now like 11 years later it was interesting process to be the front-end (consumer-end)?