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Design Thinking Books (2024)

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Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#11
Tom Kelley and David Kelley, founders of Stanford's Design School and IDEO (the industrial design firm that made things like Apple's first mouse and the standup toothpaste tube) have a great book, Creative Confidence.

Here's their website for the book, along with some tools and useful instructional videos https://www.creativeconfidence.com/tools/

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#12
I'm a dev and recently picked up "The Design of Everyday Things" as an attempt to become more design-oriented. Everyone raves about this being like the bible of design.

So far I'm about 80 pages in and have found it extremely academic and not very practical, sometimes deriving conclusions that are so far from reality that they are a bit concerning, like how a strong password does not matter because once they inevitably leak they can always be cracked via rainbow tables (the author doesn't use this exact term). As we know the exact point of a strong password is that it will not be in a rainbow table.

Of course the original version is pretty old but I picked up the latest revised version. Still some interesting insights and I haven't given up on the book quite yet but it's been a ton of theory and a lot of terminology so far.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#13
Please don’t use Design Thinking.

Design Thinking is a subset of Systems Thinking (this is the polite interpretation). Design Thinking does with its sole existence what Systems Thinking tried to avoid: Another category to put stuff into, divide and conquer. It is an over-simplified version of the original theories.

Better: Jump directly to Systems Thinking, Cybernetics and Systems Theory (and if measurements are more your thing, even try System Dynamics).

I can only recommend that anyone interested in this topic take a look at the work of one of the masters of Systems Thinking, Russel Ackoff:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9p6vrULecFI

This talk from 1991 is several dozen books heavily condensed into one hour.

(Russell Ackoff is considered one of the founders of Operations Research and ironically came to be regarded an apostate as he tried to reform the field he co-founded. He subsequently became a prominent figure of Systems Thinking)

My 2c. I'll show myself out.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#14
post #3

Noted couple of books. I've been curating (mostly design) books on a digital library: https://links.1984.design/books

This isn't really a tasteful collection. It is just a bunch of popular books, all of which that I have read being about minimalism. If that's what you want you can just use Apple as a case study because that's what you end up getting if you want "modern" and minimal. Even just drop the CSS file from source into an LLM and go through how it is implemented.

Any suggestions are welcome. I would be happy to increase the quality of the library.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#15

I'm a dev and recently picked up "The Design of Everyday Things" as an attempt to become more design-oriented. Everyone raves about this being like the bible of design. So far I'm about 80 pages in and have found it extremely academic and not very practical, sometimes deriving conclusions that are so far from reality that they are a bit concerning, like how a strong password does not matter because once they inevitab…

For Devs/Engineers and even many designers, things some of us tend to take for granted were amazing to them. So, my first recommendation is to read Refactoring UI end-to-end and keep a copy handy at your desk.

https://www.refactoringui.com

PS. Refactoring UI is from the guys who created TailwindCSS.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#16
post #13

Please don’t use Design Thinking. Design Thinking is a subset of Systems Thinking (this is the polite interpretation). Design Thinking does with its sole existence what Systems Thinking tried to avoid: Another category to put stuff into, divide and conquer. It is an over-simplified version of the original theories. Better: Jump directly to Systems Thinking, Cybernetics and Systems Theory (and if measurements are more…

Someone tried to explain systems thinking to me with respect to a planning effort we had.

I have to admit that it was very hard to me to follow what they were saying.

Maybe I’m dumb, maybe the person didn’t explain it well, or, maybe system thinking is really complex and thus hard to convey and use.

Design thinking on the other hand is easy to understand and apply.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#17
post #11

Tom Kelley and David Kelley, founders of Stanford's Design School and IDEO (the industrial design firm that made things like Apple's first mouse and the standup toothpaste tube) have a great book, Creative Confidence. Here's their website for the book, along with some tools and useful instructional videos https://www.creativeconfidence.com/tools/

+1 agreed, Creative Confidence is an insipiring book.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#18
post #16
post #13

Please don’t use Design Thinking. Design Thinking is a subset of Systems Thinking (this is the polite interpretation). Design Thinking does with its sole existence what Systems Thinking tried to avoid: Another category to put stuff into, divide and conquer. It is an over-simplified version of the original theories. Better: Jump directly to Systems Thinking, Cybernetics and Systems Theory (and if measurements are more…

Someone tried to explain systems thinking to me with respect to a planning effort we had. I have to admit that it was very hard to me to follow what they were saying. Maybe I’m dumb, maybe the person didn’t explain it well, or, maybe system thinking is really complex and thus hard to convey and use. Design thinking on the other hand is easy to understand and apply.

I have no idea what the exact topic is, but

> maybe system thinking is really complex and thus hard to convey and use.

I'm pretty sure that's not true. If you can follow how A leads to -> B, then that's about it all. Systems thinking is the same principle at a larger scale, with interesting side effects at times (eg network effects/group think/emergent phenomenon showing up).

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#19

  Design thinking is a human-centered, iterative approach to creative problem-
  solving, focusing on deeply understanding users' needs to develop innovative 
  solutions through phases like Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
Apparently. It's not immediately clear how it's different from your good old "regular" design.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#20

I'm a dev and recently picked up "The Design of Everyday Things" as an attempt to become more design-oriented. Everyone raves about this being like the bible of design. So far I'm about 80 pages in and have found it extremely academic and not very practical, sometimes deriving conclusions that are so far from reality that they are a bit concerning, like how a strong password does not matter because once they inevitab…

For Devs/Engineers and even many designers, things some of us tend to take for granted were amazing to them. So, my first recommendation is to read Refactoring UI end-to-end and keep a copy handy at your desk. https://www.refactoringui.com PS. Refactoring UI is from the guys who created TailwindCSS.

$99 for a 218 page PDF which, while it has a Goodreads page which rates it highly:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43190966-refactoring-...

doesn't have a working "Purchase on Amazon" link, and searching there for:

"Refactoring UI Adam Wathan , Steve Schoger"

returns no results.

One can get two "free" chapters in exchange for one's e-mail address.

Book deal fall through? Why?

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