[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# My UX Writing Revelation: The Presence of Inherent Systems Thinking

## Details

**Authors** Lyona, Natasha Frichiela

**Year** 2024

**Publisher** Traveloka Design (Medium)

**Kind of work** blog

**Discipline** Media & Communication

**Secondary disciplines** Business & Management

**Kind of engagement** public

**Applied** false

[Read it](https://medium.com/traveloka-design/my-ux-writing-revelation-the-presence-of-inherent-systems-thinking-3795682c8001)

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To show, after taking an eCornell course on the Cabreras' four simple rules, that systems thinking was already latent in the author's day-to-day UX writing practice, and to make the rules concrete by mapping each onto her own work.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

One project at Traveloka, begun early 2023: ancillary purchases such as baggage, seat selection, special meals and priority check-in, bought after ticket issuance. Collaborators are named by role — an interaction designer who ran the in-depth interviews, a visual designer, and other stakeholders — not by headcount.

### How they did it (methods)

A four-section post, one section per pattern. Each section states the rule and then narrates an episode from the project. The underlying work involved in-depth user interviews, iterative copy testing, and a change from dynamic copy keyed to the traveler's timeline to static copy that stays relevant at any stage.

### What they found (results)

The author reports reduced contact rates, more self-service baggage issuance, and improved search and issuance of other ancillary items. Her conclusion is that DSRP introduced no new approach but gave her language for processes she had already been running intuitively, so that systems thinking, as she puts it, has always been apparent in her UX writing. She compares the framework to glasses that sharpen existing vision rather than a tool required to solve problems.

## Commentary

### In short

A UX writer at Traveloka applies the four patterns, one per section, to a project on post-booking ancillary purchases, and concludes they named what she was already doing.

### In more detail

Lyona took an eCornell course on the four simple rules and went back through a project she had just finished to see whether the rules described it. The project concerned ancillary purchases — baggage, seats, meals, priority check-in — that customers could buy after their ticket was issued. Contact rates were high even though the e-ticket carried entry points to all of them, and in-depth interviews run by an interaction designer found that users fixed on one part of the e-ticket and rarely explored the rest. Her distinctions section splits users into those unaware of the entry points and those aware of them, and prioritizes the first group. Her systems section describes iterative copy testing, with each round of feedback treated as a part of the decision that became whole, and the shift from copy tied to the traveler's timeline to copy that holds at any stage. Her relationships section moves from bivalent thinking, where a position is either this or that, to multivalent thinking that admits many outcomes, and applies it to working with the interaction designer, the visual designer and other stakeholders. Her perspectives section is about scoping and about the difficulty of hearing differing opinions, and credits diverse input with producing more inclusive and emotionally resonant copy. She closes on an image of glasses: useful for seeing clearly, not the thing that does the seeing.

### Response

Two of the four sections use the operator rather than the label. Her distinctions section is identity and other done properly — users who know about the entry point and users who do not is a boundary drawn for a purpose, with the not-set treated as the one that matters. Her relationships section reaches the bivalent-to-multivalent point, which is further than most practitioner write-ups get before stopping at the observation that things are connected. The systems section is where the restatement slips. Treating successive rounds of copy-testing feedback as parts that make a decision whole describes a sequence in time, which is action-reaction with iteration, not composition; part-whole asks what a thing is made of and what it belongs to, and the answer in her project was available — a line of microcopy is part of an e-ticket, which is part of a post-booking flow, which is part of the ancillary purchase system she was trying to fix. Her closing claim, that the patterns named what she was already doing rather than adding anything, is the finding the theory would predict, and she has supplied a worked case of it.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**Added** 2026-10-14

**How to cite this** Lyona, Natasha Frichiela (2024). My UX Writing Revelation: The Presence of Inherent Systems Thinking. Traveloka Design (Medium).