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Design Thinking Books (2024)

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Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#111

Post by specialist »

jasonhong wrote: post #68
yakkomajuri wrote: post #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 inevitab…

I've used The Design of Everyday Things in many classes I teach. I would agree that it's not practical, but that's not its goal. Instead, it gives you frameworks for thinking about things as well as vocabulary for talking about those things. Off the top of my head, some of the key ideas include: * Affordances, that objects should have (often visual) cues that give hints as to how to use things * Mental models, that e…

DOET (neé Psychology of Everyday Things) deeply influenced me. Articulated things I had observed, experienced. Expanded my thinking.

I was using, teaching, and developing for AutoCAD at the time. Knew nothing about UI beyond my intuition. Just perplexed by how difficult it was for most to use.

Reflecting back, Norman's treatment of mental models and kinds of errors were the most impactful, evergreen design challenges I faced.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#112

Post by Grosvenor »

bsoles wrote: post #70
ccppurcell wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an analogous example for data science? I confess ignorance here, and always took the term at face value. Is the issue that "data science" tries to be agnostic about the source of the data? (I'm not claiming that that is true, just guessing)

Sure. There are many examples of data scientists attempting to use complex Machine Learning and Deep Learning models to predict machine (bearings, gears, etc.) failures from vibration data, where a simple Fourier Transform (FFT) provides a lot more insight and predictive powers about the same problem. However, spectrum analysis is not something that data scientists learn at school, yet every mechanical/electronics en…

It's much worse than that. If you dare to ask that a team speak with the problem owners - mechanics, managers, etc, you will get booted right quick.

Since the 2010's data science has gone from scientific based curiosity in solving problems to pure technicians work. There's a set of algorithms they follow, no exceptions allowed. Kaggle is a horrible anti-pattern.

NB: I am a data scientist.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#113

Post by tengbretson »

bsoles wrote: post #60

Design Thinking is the Data Science of UX: an attempt to gain influence in fields that you don't have expertise in. Even though there might be universal design principle that can be applied in many fields, the Design Thinking people think that they can just come in and design user interfaces, etc. without really having an expertise in the particular field. Design Thinking works for selling consulting and not much els…

> "I like your design thinking, I do not like your design thinking people. Your design thinking people are so unlike your design thinking."

- Gandhi

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#114

Post by uxcolumbo »

bsoles wrote: post #60

Design Thinking is the Data Science of UX: an attempt to gain influence in fields that you don't have expertise in. Even though there might be universal design principle that can be applied in many fields, the Design Thinking people think that they can just come in and design user interfaces, etc. without really having an expertise in the particular field. Design Thinking works for selling consulting and not much els…

Not sure what your definition of 'Design Thinking' is.

Design Thinking isn't about people thinking "that they can just come in and design user interfaces, etc. without really having an expertise in the particular field."

It's a problem solving approach using UCD methods amongst others and working with experts in the field to come up with solutions and ideas to a given problem space.

Key thing is you work with the people who are experts in the field, for example working with medical experts to design a new health related application etc.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#115

Post by doctorpangloss »

bsoles wrote: post #70
ccppurcell wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an analogous example for data science? I confess ignorance here, and always took the term at face value. Is the issue that "data science" tries to be agnostic about the source of the data? (I'm not claiming that that is true, just guessing)

Sure. There are many examples of data scientists attempting to use complex Machine Learning and Deep Learning models to predict machine (bearings, gears, etc.) failures from vibration data, where a simple Fourier Transform (FFT) provides a lot more insight and predictive powers about the same problem. However, spectrum analysis is not something that data scientists learn at school, yet every mechanical/electronics en…

i confess, i've read both of your comments on this - your analogy and a deeper explanation of the analogy - and i still have no idea what you are saying. i'm not stupid. so first, my feedback here is, it sounds like you are an educator or in an education-adjacent role, and you should focus on making more sense haha. like lay out your beefs clearly, it sounds like you have a beef with interdisciplinary work, specifically between some STEM departments and especially with humanities and STEM departments, which is subjective. you don't have to be objective about everything. you can just say, "i don't like this design thinking thing because i don't like the people involved" or whatever. but i don't know! i cannot figure out what you are saying.

it sounds like your point is: "some ways of solving problems are superior to others." i've heard this take a million times. one perspective i'll offer to you is, math is not the only way to solve problems. it's not even the best way in many cases. not everything can be solved by defining a narrow goal, and then having a dispute about the methods, and then picking some objective method and then applying it very optimally, or whatever. this is also on you, as an educator, to understand! i could give a bajillion specific examples.

but first, you have to concede: an analogy nobody understands is bad, and you have to own that, and two, it's not really clear, what exactly is your dispute with Design Thinking? it doesn't have anything to do with user interfaces... so why the hell are you talking about it? why "Design Thinking people"? What is your beef here?

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#116

Post by EugenioPerea »

drivers99 wrote: post #108
Nemi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this. Thank you for introducing me to "Norman Doors". I hadn't realized someone else had described this in such detail. I have been complaining about this years. Ok this will be a tangent, but I also take this one step farther and also talk about "documentation". Just for the record, I don't think documentation is all good or all bad, but it definitely can be used incorrectly and in excess. And Norman Doors an…

There's a funny example of even the "documentation" going wrong. At a local mall, there is a set of doors and they have put the word "PULL" (vertically like: P U L L ) on the window of the door, so from the wrong/opposite side, you still see the word "PULL" when you should PUSH (even if most of the letters are backward) so you still are tempted to take the wrong action when you see it. (I tried to explain the ridicul…

I've long suspected that I have a particular form of...dyslexia?, because I suffer from that Pull/Push thing, but also freeze when confronted with elevator door buttons that look like this: /><, and with public bathroom entrances, because in Spanish it's usually H/M (hombres/mujeres), but in English it's M/F (male/female), so the presence of the M throws me for a loop. My read on this is that if I see both options at the same time, my brain stutters for a second.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#117

Post by bsoles »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #114
bsoles wrote: post #60

Design Thinking is the Data Science of UX: an attempt to gain influence in fields that you don't have expertise in. Even though there might be universal design principle that can be applied in many fields, the Design Thinking people think that they can just come in and design user interfaces, etc. without really having an expertise in the particular field. Design Thinking works for selling consulting and not much els…

Not sure what your definition of 'Design Thinking' is. Design Thinking isn't about people thinking "that they can just come in and design user interfaces, etc. without really having an expertise in the particular field." It's a problem solving approach using UCD methods amongst others and working with experts in the field to come up with solutions and ideas to a given problem space. Key thing is you work with the peo…

It is the practice that matters, which is the "designers" trying to elevate their position to something more special by inserting their special rules into the design process, often at the expense of other people involved, including the experts.

"Working with the experts" always turns into weird formalized brainstorming sessions or other rituals, where the designer defines the process and the rules, and others' role is just to be little players in the game, but not the referee.

This is nothing new. We have seen the same thing with PMs and "scrum masters" inserting themselves into the software development process with shit like Agile, Scrum, etc.

If design thinking is just a problem solving approach, experts and practitioners in the field are perfectly capable of doing that. We don't need the shamans of Design Thinking to guide the process.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#118

Post by gond »

turnsout wrote: post #77
gond wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I practiced Design Thinking at IDEO for 10 years That may possibly explain your motivation but even ten years do not make it right, nor the speed of teaching. You are saying it yourself: internalising the very abstract system for decomposing and adapting it has a value of its own you cannot replicate by pre-solving it. The spinning-off of Design Thinking only accomplished further segmentation of a space which was al…

It's always valuable to have a generalizable skill. But design is fundamentally a craft; an applied art. It's problem-solving. And like any craft, there are tools and techniques that are tried and true. You could approach woodworking with a ground-up Systems Thinking approach, but would you turn down the advice of a carpenter with 30 years of experience? Technically all you need to understand woodworking is a physics…

Around ten years ago, I was a designer for some 20 years. A strange path led me to a different place which is intermixed or adjacent to the field of organisational theory.

At that time, I decomposed problems too, maybe a bit differently than a developer, I can’t really know. I still decompose, except that the difference to the past is that analysis only makes up one part of the larger whole. I knew many designers which never did either.

I agree with you that there are some areas which do not need theory. That depends on where you define the system boundaries. In the example of a carpenter: Yes, 30 years, the person indeed knows that stuff. One of first question of Systems Thinking, however, would be: What’s the reference system, is his company viable in the future? I very much believe that if you apply this to complex projects, to ‘communication and control’ of an enterprise, that one should know the backstory.

The reductionist approach got us to the problems, applying reductionism to a theory trying to solve reductionism is courageous. In my opinion, the method which is used to teach must incorporate the principle which it is trying to convey. An alternative worldview needs to have a starting point somewhere, and I like to think it starts with the education, which is not to say that I do not understand the urge to speed up absorption of the theory.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#119

Post by rawgabbit »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #115
bsoles wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. There are many examples of data scientists attempting to use complex Machine Learning and Deep Learning models to predict machine (bearings, gears, etc.) failures from vibration data, where a simple Fourier Transform (FFT) provides a lot more insight and predictive powers about the same problem. However, spectrum analysis is not something that data scientists learn at school, yet every mechanical/electronics en…

i confess, i've read both of your comments on this - your analogy and a deeper explanation of the analogy - and i still have no idea what you are saying. i'm not stupid. so first, my feedback here is, it sounds like you are an educator or in an education-adjacent role, and you should focus on making more sense haha. like lay out your beefs clearly, it sounds like you have a beef with interdisciplinary work, specifica…

I believe he is trying to articulate the failings of e.g., JFK's Whiz Kids who were experts of statistical analysis and tried to use that knowledge to domains they knew little about. In a nutshell, these experts tend to deep dive on parts of the problem where data was available and ignore the parts of the problem that is not quantified. Which is usually a huge mistake.

Re: Design Thinking Books (2024)

#120

Post by bsoles »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #115
bsoles wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. There are many examples of data scientists attempting to use complex Machine Learning and Deep Learning models to predict machine (bearings, gears, etc.) failures from vibration data, where a simple Fourier Transform (FFT) provides a lot more insight and predictive powers about the same problem. However, spectrum analysis is not something that data scientists learn at school, yet every mechanical/electronics en…

i confess, i've read both of your comments on this - your analogy and a deeper explanation of the analogy - and i still have no idea what you are saying. i'm not stupid. so first, my feedback here is, it sounds like you are an educator or in an education-adjacent role, and you should focus on making more sense haha. like lay out your beefs clearly, it sounds like you have a beef with interdisciplinary work, specifica…

As many other people on HN, I am an advocate for software engineers and I think it is important that software engineers themselves develop expertise and become owners in their particular fields of application, their processes, etc.

Attempts to undermine their role and turn developers into simple cogs in the machine rub me the wrong way.

I perceive (you might disagree) that Design Thinking, Agile, Scrum, and similar things as attempt for designers, PMs, etc. to insert themselves into the process, not as equal partners, but as people with elevated privileges over software developers.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea and ideals of Design Thinking. I disagree with the practitioners and their perception of themselves as something special over software developer.

I also think that my original analogy at the top is perfectly understood by a lot of people here as much as I understand the type of people on HN.

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