Designing and Evaluating Complex System Behaviour under Pressure
Designing and evaluating how complex systems—including AI systems and institutional decision processes—perform in culturally complex, real-world conditions. We develop and apply evaluation and foresight methods—including simulation and experimental tools—to test how systems respond under constraint and how they are likely to behave as conditions change. This surfaces system behaviour in practice—identifying potential failure modes, trust breakdown, and opportunities to better align systems with the cultural, social, and emotional realities they operate within—before these effects scale.
ABOUT
FOUNDER BIO
Leon Tan, PhD
Leon is a researcher and consultant working on how complex systems—including AI systems and institutional decision processes—behave in evolving real-world conditions. He develops and applies experimental methods—including simulation, evaluation, and visualisation—to examine how systems behave under constraints, identify affordances for alignment with social and cultural realities, and translate these into interventions for design, policy, and system development.
STUDIO PHILOSOPHY
Many systems are designed around simplified assumptions—stable users, linear behaviour, and clean data. In practice, they operate within conditions of cultural, social, and environmental complexity that underlying models fail to capture. Our work begins from this gap, treating complexity as the environment systems must perform within. Behaviour is not fixed or predictable, but emerges through interaction, constraint, and change over time. This makes it possible to identify both breakdown and emerging affordances—informing how systems can better align with the realities they operate within.
PROJECTS &
PUBLICATIONS
Working on a complex system or decision environment? Test how it behaves under real-world conditions—and identify where alignment, trust, and performance can be improved.
2025
Superfutures Research. (2025). Beyond the score: Cultural trust, relational risk, and strategic foresight in digital finance (Version 1.0). Superfutures Research.
Superfutures Research. (2025). Beyond the score: Personas and scenarios (Version 1.0). Superfutures Research.
Tan, L., White, T., Renata, H., Lamwilai, P., De Groot, C., Smith, E., & Goldsmith, A. (2025, February 25–27). Decolonial design and Indigenous placemaking in the Wairaka Precinct [Poster presentation]. Thinking, Learning and Doing: Plural Ways of Design – Nineteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.
2023
Tan, L., Madhukailya, M., & Bogdan, C. (2023). Assembling desire in art and design education. In M. Sharma & A. Alexander (Eds.), The Routledge companion to decolonizing art, craft & visual culture education. Routledge.
Tan, L., & White, T. (2023). Raranga and tikanga pā harakeke: An Indigenous model of socially engaged art and education. In M. Sharma & A. Alexander (Eds.), The Routledge companion to decolonizing art, craft & visual culture education. Routledge.
