[HN Gopher] Design Thinking Books (2024)
___________________________________________________________________
Design Thinking Books (2024)
Author : rrm1977
Score : 259 points
Date : 2026-01-22 11:51 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.designorate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.designorate.com)
| kaizenb wrote:
| Noted couple of books.
|
| I've been curating (mostly design) books on a digital library:
| https://links.1984.design/books
| jgeurts wrote:
| This looks like a really nice collection of books. Thanks for
| sharing!
| password54321 wrote:
| 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.
| kaizenb wrote:
| Any suggestions are welcome. I would be happy to increase the
| quality of the library.
| WillAdams wrote:
| My first recommendation would be to impose a hierarchy ---
| surely the books can be grouped in some fashion useful to
| the viewer? Perhaps by the intended reader? So maybe:
|
| - beginning designer
|
| - developer working with designer
|
| - developer working without assistance from a designer
|
| - supervisor working with team of designers and developers
|
| Long flat lists of undifferentiated items are a common
| problem in design and your page not solving that is
| decidedly not confidence-building.
|
| Also, was surprised not to see what I consider one of the
| best books on visual interface design listed:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/344729.Designing_Visual
| _...
|
| Unfortunately, this book was marred reputationally by the
| reissue having a ghastly cover and poor quality screengrab
| reproductions --- track down a first edition if possible.
| kaizenb wrote:
| Thanks, added the book to the library and will explore
| categorization options.
| password54321 wrote:
| Most web design books are essentially going to tell you to
| put a navigation bar on top or on the side, with a big call
| to action button in the centre while laying everything out
| on a grid (hence why most websites now looks the same).
| Logo design books now are always going to tell you take
| inspiration from the Twitter or Nike logo e.g. something
| that is simple but easily recognisable from afar
| (everything is now a swirl or a a single polygon). The
| colour theory stuff is half pseudo-science and mostly going
| to tell you to pick from a small colour palette with a
| consistent primary/secondary colour while keeping in mind
| that colours are perceived differently in different
| cultures (now you have everything in black/blue/red and
| white). The only one that I liked was Refactoring UI
| because it demonstrated how small changes can add up to
| make something that looks amateur look professional. But
| you can probably learn more just by investigating things
| you like yourself and implementing them.
| janeway wrote:
| Wow excellent thank you
| barrenko wrote:
| Nice collection, "Weniger, aber besser" by Rams will suffice
| and is at home on _any_ shelf.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I know it is more niche to the online/websites POV, but "Don't
| Make Me Think" is a book that needs to be somewhere in the lines
| of "The Design of Everyday Things." Of course, I re-read the
| latter as reminders and catch-up readings.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Make_Me_Think
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha, I love even the cover photo of "The Design of Everyday
| Things."
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| I was surprised this wasn't on there, even with a caveat that
| it's for online sources like you note.
| smikhanov wrote:
| I like how the author correctly shown the cover image for the
| "The Sciences of the Artificial", with plural 's' in 'sciences',
| but then in the paragraph praising it gleefully ignored it.
|
| Probably means this article wasn't written by AI!
| carlsborg wrote:
| I will add : "The Design of Design" by Fred Brooks (of The
| Mythical Man Month fame)
| smurda wrote:
| 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/
| chrisweekly wrote:
| +1 agreed, Creative Confidence is an insipiring book.
| yakkomajuri wrote:
| 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.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| 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.
| WillAdams wrote:
| $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?
| xandrius wrote:
| Either you want to support the authors and give them the
| price they ask or don't. You being on this platform gives
| me the assumption that you can definitely find pretty much
| any PDF on the Internet for free, in a way or another.
| WillAdams wrote:
| I would prefer to support the authors by the purchase of
| a dead tree/printed book.
| rytis wrote:
| May be it's just me, but the very first example (contacts
| form) looks better (easier to read) on the left than text in
| empty space on the right (which is supposed to be the good
| design)...
| wpm wrote:
| It's not just you, I didn't even open the link and know
| exactly which two examples you're talking about because I
| left this same comment on HN a while ago.
|
| So much of modern design is fashion yet the designers
| pretend it isn't. Like it's some scientifically provable
| truth or axiom that faint lines between list items is
| "bad".
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Just judging by eye, I'll bet in both of those designs the
| "Team/Member" text would fail one of the WCAG grades.
|
| Thin, light grey text on a white background is not really
| very good design.
| philote wrote:
| I took a Computer Science class decades ago that used that book
| as the core of the class material. I don't remember a single
| thing about that class now except that I hate that book and the
| professor bragging about designing cockpit instruments or some
| such. I learned more out of a cognitive psych class.
| kennyk37 wrote:
| i also picked up the book with high hopes and dropped off about
| where you are at. useful concepts like affordances and
| signifiers but felt like a lot of filler.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| For me the real capability unlock from The Design of Everyday
| Things was that it made me start noticing and thinking
| deliberately about design decisions, which pushed me to begin
| evaluating everything through that lens. In general it comes
| down to looking at something and asking "what is good /
| effective and what is bad / annoying about this". If you keep
| doing that enough you develop your own taste and a greater
| appreciation of the world. Donald Norman isn't handing you a
| map, he's teaching you how to build your own.
| yakkomajuri wrote:
| Yes this I agree with and was my whole goal with the book
| davidivadavid wrote:
| "Bible of design" might be a bit excessive. It's a good design
| 101 book. Definitely longer than it should be, and kind of
| fumbles the explanation of "affordances", which the author had
| to clarify later. It's representative of "design thinking" as a
| historically well-situated concept in design, but that's not
| necessarily a good thing in itself.
|
| It really depends what you're looking for. If you want
| something deeper, more abstract, I would recommend going
| straight to something like _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ by
| Christopher Alexander, which I think typically appeals to the
| more abstraction-oriented part of the mind of engineers. If you
| want to get more actionable, practical day to day recipes,
| Refactoring UI as suggested somewhere else in the thread is a
| decent suggestion.
| al_borland wrote:
| I was gifted this book my a CIO when in college. She had a
| dozen copies in her office to hand out to various people.
|
| It took me a few tries to get up the will to actually read it.
| It was years ago, so I don't remember a lot of details. My main
| take away was to make controls logical for the thing being
| controlled. "Norman doors" are the big one, but I often think
| about it while I'm in my car trying to do something on a touch
| screen, when all I want is a knob, button, or switch.
|
| In the modern era of web design I think it would point to these
| websites (like most of Apple's product pages), that make users
| scroll through indulgent animations, just to get to the
| content. It may be cool the first time, but is very annoying
| for repeat visits, and it feels like it breaks my scrolling
| expectations. Not to mention all the horizontal scrolling
| thrown in there, which becomes a headache for those without the
| hardware to do it easily, and confusing to change scroll
| direction all the time.
| arethuza wrote:
| My car has a staggeringly bad UI design choice - the cancel
| active navigation the control to do this only appears when
| you hold your finger close to the screen. Pretty much every
| time I want to do this I am flummoxed as to "Where did the
| button go" - before I eventually remember.
|
| The navigation system is good - I prefer it to using my phone
| and CarPlay but that design is terrible.
| al_borland wrote:
| Is it a VW? I had a VW with a proximity sensor like that. I
| didn't use the in-car navigation, but it did that for the
| favorites on the radio. They only showed as I moved my
| finger close to the screen.
| arethuza wrote:
| VW Group yes - a Skoda
| barrkel wrote:
| I also have a Skoda that also has that "feature". I
| prefer using Maps via Android Auto, but if I am in that
| interface, and I have to cancel it, the way I cancel it
| is using a voice command.
| arethuza wrote:
| Voice commands and Scottish accents are not a great
| combination.
| Nemi wrote:
| 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 and a great way to get this point across.
|
| When someone creates or installs a Norman Door by accident or
| out of ignorance and then realizes there is a problem, they
| often think "I know, I will document it!" and they add little
| placards to the door that says "Push/Pull" or some such. They
| see that this helps with a small subset of users and thinks
| "there, I fixed the problem, people just need to read the
| documentation and now it is their problem if they don't". But
| if you watch users of the door, a large portion will still
| use the door incorrectly because... people don't read
| documentation. If they don't read documentation, is it the
| users fault the door was designed incorrectly or was it the
| designers problem?
|
| I use this as an example for my developers on thinking before
| documenting troublesome code or a confusing interface to
| first ask "can I design this so it is less confusing?" and if
| so, that would usually be preferable to adding documentation
| "to solve the problem". Well designed code (or doors) with no
| documentation always beats poor designs with documentation.
| creeble wrote:
| Which reminds me of another "there, problem solved!" pet
| peeve of mine. I call it the Default Trap.
|
| In many cases (Norman Doors are an example), there are two
| or more equally valid ways to do something. By "equally
| valid", I mean there is no clear standard for whether it
| should operate one way or the other, and if you ask 100
| people which way it should work (which no one ever does),
| you get something approaching 50%.
|
| So the product manager or perhaps developer simply says
| "make it a setting", and everyone agrees and declares the
| problem solved.
|
| But the problem is, you have to choose a default. And 90%
| of the time, no one is going to change that default, or
| even discover how to. So you have to be very correct about
| assuming which value is the best default - and at that
| point, it probably doesn't matter that you make it an
| option.
| al_borland wrote:
| The alternative I've seen to this is to ask the user
| which way they want it during the setup process. Light vs
| Dark mode is an example of this. The net result of this
| user choice is a longer, more complex, and burdensome
| onboarding process that is rife with decision fatigue.
| Once the user has chosen, if they don't like their
| choice, they may not know how to change it, since that
| initial action was outside of any standard interface.
|
| The other issue with settings for everything is that the
| settings become bloated. In OS X, and to some extent iOS,
| I knew where all the settings were for the most part.
| Browsing them all to see what was available was a
| consumable thing, and I could largely remember where to
| go without much trouble. As macOS and iOS have added more
| settings to try and please everyone, and now redesigned
| the Settings apps... I've given up. I have no idea where
| most things are, what is in there, and have to search for
| everything and hope I use the right words.
|
| There is an old video of Steve Jobs[0] talking about how
| every product is a series of decisions and trade offs.
| People pay companies to make all these decisions, and
| ideally, there is a company that makes decisions to
| similar enough sensibilities as yourself so that you can
| buy a product and use it without much fuss. It seems more
| and more that these decisions are all being pushed to the
| consumer, which in some ways makes a worse product. If I
| wanted infinite chose at the expense of complexity, I'd
| be running Gentoo or Arch. People choose macOS because
| it's supposed to be easy.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmRNIGqzuRI
| drivers99 wrote:
| 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 ridiculousness of it to the person I was
| with, but I don't think they cared.)
| EugenioPerea wrote:
| 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.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| The thing about norman doors is that it's not really a design
| flaw, not in every case. Like handles on push doors. It's
| tempting to think of that as a design flaw but more likely
| it's designed to be mass produced and reversible, the cost of
| making two (or more) configurations being much higher than
| the occasional confused user. You could argue this only
| enhances the metaphor as a lot of design issues occur when
| things are optimised for the company and not the user.
| al_borland wrote:
| I still see this as a design flaw, even if it explains why
| it was done. They save a little in manufacturing, and then
| thousands of people per day end up using it wrong for
| decades, in the case of a high traffic door, like at a
| mall.
|
| Related... this is one of my favorite Far Side comics.
|
| https://fifetli.wordpress.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/01/scr...
| gtowey wrote:
| Wouldn't the solution to make the door so different handles
| can fit on both sides and then the installer can simply put
| the correct handle on each side as needed? Surely that is
| just as much of a manufacturing efficiency improvement.
| bschne wrote:
| my take on this book is that 1) it contains a lot of
| foundational knowledge/wisdom about design as interpreted
| broadly that is very useful across contexts, and 2) it is
| itself, ironically, an example of poor design. Not in the
| visual sense, but in that it's structure and writing do a
| pretty bad job actually conveying that knowledge to the reader
| and being navigable.
|
| I tried reading it and hated it, then I came back knowing bits
| and pieces of its contents from elsewhere and was like "yup,
| this is the only place I've seen all of this together".
| elicash wrote:
| Like you say, it's old and I'm nostalgic for the time that I
| associate reading it with. I think that explains some of the
| love folks (or at least me) have for it.
|
| I've never revisited the book and thanks to your comment I
| might not ever now ha
| smusamashah wrote:
| It tells lots of things but you can takeaway a few things.
|
| One of the key takeaway example for me was that if you make an
| approachable flat surface, people will put things on it. This
| is a small example but tells a lot about design of common
| things.
|
| Another was that I shouldn't be blaming myself for failing to
| use an everyday thing, I should be blaming its design.
|
| After reading the book I now keep seeing so many design flaws
| in so many things around. It also made me appreciate good
| design similarly. I probably think a bit more about users of
| code etc now, doesn't mean I write better, but it has changed
| perspective quite a bit.
| nemetroid wrote:
| I read it and thought it contained several good ideas, but was
| excessively wordy and would have benefited from being half as
| long.
| jbs789 wrote:
| The Norman door was a powerful example for me, as it emphasises
| that the user is not the problem but the push door with the
| handle is the problem.
|
| And if you're designing the door, it is your responsibility to
| think deeply and observe behaviour, to design an intuitive
| interface.
|
| I do agree that it's rather academic, but I did leave with that
| one takeaway.
| jasonhong wrote:
| 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
| every design has three different models, namely system
| implementation, design model, and user model, and that the
| design model and user model should try to match each other *
| Gulf of Evaluation (the gap between the current system state
| and people's understanding of it) and Gulf of Execution (the
| gap between what people want the system to do and how to use
| the system to do it) * Kinds of Errors and how to design to
| prevent and recover from them, e.g. slips (chose the right
| action but accidentally did the wrong thing, e.g. fat finger)
| vs mistakes (chose the wrong action to do)
|
| What's particularly useful about Norman's book is that these
| key ideas apply for all kinds of user interfaces, from command-
| line to GUI to voice-only to AR/VR to AI chatbot. I'd encourage
| you to think about this book in this kind of framing, that it
| gives you general frameworks for reasoning and talking about UX
| problems rather than specific practical solutions.
| 65 wrote:
| I read the Design of Everyday Things and most of it was
| painfully obvious examples and was overly philosophical.
|
| Design is solving problems so they're intuitive for the user.
| Obviously a door with a handle shouldn't be a push door, I
| don't really think you need to write a book about it. And the
| types of people creating bad design are generally constrained
| by cost, time, or practicality, not necessarily by education.
| gdilla wrote:
| uh, the fact that this is written down and carefully put in
| frameworks is a good thing. Otherwise you can say any
| academic book is intuitive. the fact that it sounds obvious
| means they're getting the message across. because lord
| knows it was needed and there's plenty of failed products
| and ideas because of shitty design.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Obviously a door with a handle shouldn't be a push door,
| I don't really think you need to write a book about it.
|
| It's common to illustrate principles with examples that
| appear obvious, i.e. that everyone agrees on, so that after
| having it conceptualized as a principle, you'll apply it in
| less obvious circumstances. Many things are obvious only in
| hindsight.
|
| > And the types of people creating bad design are generally
| constrained by cost, time, or practicality, not necessarily
| by education.
|
| That's not true, because a lot of flawed design is being
| promoted and defended in public as the thing to do.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Obviously a door with a handle shouldn't be a push door,
| I don't really think you need to write a book about it.
|
| And yet we've all encountered push doors with handles many
| times.
|
| > And the types of people creating bad design are generally
| constrained by cost, time, or practicality, not necessarily
| by education.
|
| Good design is far cheaper and easier than bad design in
| the long run. Being able to articulate the benefit of good
| design such that stakeholders provide the resources for
| good design is perhaps one of the most important reasons to
| have such an education.
| specialist wrote:
| DOET (nee 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.
| asplake wrote:
| Still more on the psychological and even philosophical side
| than being about how to do design, I really enjoyed Jenny
| Davis, "How artifacts afford" (2020). It takes consideration of
| 'affordance' to a new level. If that rings bells, you'll love
| it.
| gond wrote:
| 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.
| baxtr wrote:
| 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.
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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).
| turnsout wrote:
| Design Thinking (and more broadly, human-centered design) is a
| pragmatic framework for doing product design in an effective
| and productive manner. Systems Thinking is a massively more
| general superset. I'm not really sure how you'd operationalize
| that on a design project, except by following first principles,
| which would essentially get you to DT / HCD.
| gond wrote:
| That is exactly the point.
|
| Taking a theory (Systems Thinking), a mental model which has
| the primary goal of holistically identifying, describing, and
| understanding wholes and reducing it down to a set of
| methods/framework out of ease of use (the pragmatism) is
| exactly the wrong approach in my opinion.
|
| Systems Thinking and all of its applications scenarios are
| based on epistemology. To turn it into a recipe is a
| wrongdoing. The whole notion is that one size does not fit
| all.
|
| The operationalization of Systems Theory for a given case at
| hand is the responsibility and the transfer function of the
| operator whose approach this is. The process itself yields
| understanding and should not be abbreviated.
| turnsout wrote:
| I practiced Design Thinking at IDEO for 10 years, and I can
| assure you it's not "one size fits all." And you can
| onboard an intern or a client CEO in days, without
| requiring them to internalize a very abstract system for
| decomposing problems.
| gond wrote:
| >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 already too
| fractured and was a disservice to the field.
|
| I don't think we will approach a consensus here, and
| that's fine.
| turnsout wrote:
| 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 textbook and maybe an
| organic chemistry textbook.
|
| My guess is you're a software developer (as I am), and in
| my opinion the fatal flaw of our group is the incorrect
| belief that we could do anything or solve any problem by
| simply decomposing it into smaller and smaller
| components. The thing is, for a big enough problem, there
| are an almost infinite number of ways to break it down
| and then build it back up. In optimization terms, complex
| projects are highly nonlinear problems, so you may be
| able to understand what the inputs are, but it sometimes
| takes wisdom and experience to tune the parameters.
| gond wrote:
| 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.
| jjk166 wrote:
| So your argument is don't use an off the shelf tool that
| gets the job done, build your own tool every time which
| likely doesn't offer any advantage over the standard tool?
|
| If you think using Design Thinking goes against Systems
| Thinking, I don't think you really get either.
| gond wrote:
| >If you think using Design Thinking goes against Systems
| Thinking
|
| No, not against. One is a subset of the other. but you
| are free to prove me wrong.
|
| > likely doesn't offer any advantage over the standard
| tool?
|
| The process in itself has value. Are you sure about the
| meaning of epistemological?
| jjk166 wrote:
| > No, not against. One is a subset of the other. but you
| are free to prove me wrong.
|
| So what do you mean by "Design Thinking does with its
| sole existence what Systems Thinking tried to avoid"?
|
| > Are you sure about the meaning of epistemological?
|
| Yes, but I'm not sure why you think it's relevant here.
| gond wrote:
| > So what do you mean by "Design Thinking does with its
| sole existence what Systems Thinking tried to avoid"?
|
| It's its approach to Systems. Take the 5 stages. Why 5,
| not 10 or 3? Why stages at all? Who's to say? Why not
| enable people to create stages themselves and run from
| there? Or whatever fits their business.
|
| Why not teach methodology instead of method?
|
| >I'm not sure why you think it's relevant here.
|
| I can only repeat myself: The value is in the process of
| inquiry itself. Systems Theory is not a set of methods.
| It is an epistemological based theory and requires a
| shift in how a person perceives reality, the often cited
| worldview. How do you know what you know? By assuming 5
| stages? Is that objectively induced? What happens to that
| if looking through the lens of radical constructivism?
| The theory requires to incorporate multiple worldviews
| and with that, negates the assumption of an objective
| truth.
| logicprog wrote:
| I've been very interested in cybernetics and systems thinking
| lately -- would you be able to recommend some good books? I'm
| not afraid of difficult academic or philosophical reading, but
| I'm looking for stuff that's large in scope, applies to general
| fields, etc.
| gond wrote:
| There are so many subsets of the theory and I have no idea
| what would interest you and what you already know. Have you
| seen this paper?
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220231906_The_Origi.
| ..
|
| It leans a bit more on the cybernetic side but gives an
| overview and has what is possibly equally important as the
| text itself: some 7 pages of references. I started with
| openly accessible academic papers instead of books. If you
| find something interest there, you will surely have the
| direct reference to proceed further into that direction right
| at hand. Papers are shorter, you can switch the direction
| more easily. The price to pay is to miss the bigger picture a
| couple of times (which a book may convey) until some loose
| ends come together and create an aha moment.
|
| (given what you said I would stay clear of all
| reinterpretations/popular science books. I would read
| something straight from the source, the people in the field,
| in whatever form it may show up.)
| eleventyseven wrote:
| Well my 0.2c: in that case it sounds like Systems Thinking is
| just a subset of Thinking when we live in a world of systems
| huhtenberg wrote:
| 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.
| spinningslate wrote:
| I think that's the point. The underpinning exhortation is to
| "think about design" where the outcome is something that
| successfully addresses users needs, is feasible to create, and
| commercially viable.
|
| "Design Thinking" as a brand has codified that in several ways
| - not all successful. But the underlying principle is sound:
| there are plenty of examples of products/services that failed
| to address one or more of the 3 dimensions.
|
| I found this quote from the linked article [0] more helpful:
|
| > Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses
| the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs
| with what is technologically feasible and what a viable
| business strategy can convert into customer value and market
| opportunity.
|
| [0]: https://www.designorate.com/design-thinking-guide-what-
| why-h...
| yashasolutions wrote:
| it is not - just a way to position design and untie it from the
| visual output that is also called design. Design thinking will
| not make you a logo (but a logo designer could pretty much do
| design thinking...)
| arnorhs wrote:
| Yes I agree, and the replies don't really make it any more
| clear.
|
| The biggest differentiator of design thinking is really
| addressing the XY problem. In 95% of cases clients will come to
| you to design their solution. Ie they already think they have a
| solution to their problem and now they want it to look good.
|
| Design thinking is basically more like root cause analysis, or
| the 5 why's.. and an emphasis on taking to end users (the
| people with the problem) without having a solution.
|
| Once you understand the problem more fundamentally is only when
| you start cooking up with a solution.
|
| And the result of that process might not even be a traditional
| design, but perhaps just a tweak to something, like moving your
| onboarding to later in the ca process..
|
| In practice however.. 95% of designers who say they practice
| design thinking disregard this, and just want to design
| wherever the client asks for
| epolanski wrote:
| It doesn't claim to be different? It puts more emphasis on the
| design part.
| mattkevan wrote:
| I was confused when I first heard about 'Design Thinking' as a
| thing because as a designer it sounded just like the standard
| design process that I already knew inside-out and backwards.
|
| After a while I realised a few things about it:
|
| 1. Yes it is the standard design process, but with a fancy
| title.
|
| 2. It's been given a fancy title as that helps sell books and
| launch consulting careers
|
| 3. It's actually useful as it gets clients and stakeholders
| involved in the design process. They start thinking about the
| problems they want to solve and who they want to solve them for
| - and more importantly have a personal stake in the outcomes.
| Moves the conversation from 'I want this' to 'here's the
| problem'.
|
| I've run design thinking workshops with everyone from primary
| school children to CEOs and they've all loved it.
| gizzlon wrote:
| "Must read" ? Must?
|
| GTFO with this hyperbolic language
| any1 wrote:
| I was very disappointed when I learned that this wasn't about
| designing books that think.
| bradbeattie wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
| andai wrote:
| I love 101 Things I Learned at Architecture School.
|
| It's a very light, approachable book, dealing with surprisingly
| universal principles. Also it has very nice pictures.
|
| Most of it also applies to game dev, and to the design of
| experiences.
| what_was_it wrote:
| I improved my doodling skills from that book, but I'm not sure
| I learned anything generalizable.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| My two cents as a 20 year product manager with +10 enterprise
| applications under my belt (and having read several of these):
|
| # "Don't make me think" is a seminal work on design thinking for
| online services. I've yet to come across a book with as much
| relevance and substance even though it was written for the dot
| com era.
|
| # "Positioning" by Al Reis is a book I wish I read 15 years ago
| when I started my company... your product's strategic positioning
| will greatly inform and shape design decisions (typography,
| colors, tones, copy, etc)
|
| # "Ogilvy on Advertising" - written by the legend himself, once
| you read this book, it will change the way you see all ads in any
| medium
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| I have similar experience and agree with your book
| recommendations. Depending on your vertical I would add the
| Toyota Way later to understand factory design and efficiency.
| It's interesting to read back to back.
| TZubiri wrote:
| It seems that I have learned to distrust websites that show ads.
|
| I don't think there's nothing wrong with wanting to get paid via
| ads. But I don't see why a list of "design thinking" books should
| be some piece of info that you should be paid for.
|
| At least there's an author to the article I guess
| bsoles wrote:
| 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 else.
| Nobody wants another Agile(TM) process imposed on software
| developers (in my particular case) that attempts to turn
| developers into factory line workers.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| 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)
| bsoles wrote:
| 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
| engineer working in the field knows about it. So, without an
| expertise in a particular field, data scientists often reach
| for a big hammer, when more specialized tools exist and are
| known to the experts in the field.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| Yet I suspect that mechanical engineers are not writing
| software for companies in the large. There are software
| developers doing so.
|
| I suspect that they should be consulted by data science
| folks as domain experts.
|
| That said won't AI replace both? ;)
| layer8 wrote:
| Likewise, UX designers should consult HCI experts.
| randcraw wrote:
| Another classic example is data scientists trying to model
| biological processes (or answer questions about processes
| while ignorant of which components regulate others).
| Systems biology has a long history of largely clueless
| attempts to predict outcomes from complex processes that no
| one understands well enough to model usefully. The
| biologists know this but the data scientists do not.
| mythical_39 wrote:
| huh. I'm a professional data scientist, and my masters was
| in signal processing. In one class the final exam required
| us to transcribe fourier transforms of speech into the
| actual words. In another the final exam required us to
| perform 2d FFTs in our head.
|
| Please be careful about generalizing.
|
| I agree that many 'data science' programs don't teach these
| skills, and you certainly have evidence behind your
| assertation.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I don't think anyone is making the claim that data
| science has no merit, or data scientists are universally
| ignorant of anything.
|
| Simply that some data scientists, formally trained or
| titled by themselves or others, have been known to apply
| their skills to data without having special knowledge
| regarding the data.
|
| It is a bit of a cliche in some of our experiences. The
| consulting company that analyzes data for a decision
| paralyzed organization, that seeks outside guidance in
| lieu of getting better leadership, is something I see.
|
| That is a real phenomenon, and despite good intentions,
| can have all the effectiveness of reading tea leaves.
|
| Because there is always data to be scienced. Competently
| or not.
| bsoles wrote:
| > ... my masters was in signal processing
|
| But, you are making my point for me here. Most data
| scientists don't get masters in signal processing. You
| are also acknowledging that gaining expertise in a
| particular field was worth pursuing.
| Grosvenor wrote:
| 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.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| 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?
| rawgabbit wrote:
| 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.
| bsoles wrote:
| 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.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| having a specific negative experience can be interesting,
| why don't you talk about that instead? generally, having
| been both the "design thinker" and the thinkee, in both
| the formal big corporate setting you are lamenting and in
| a less formal research environment, my and my colleagues
| experiences have been unequivocally positive. nobody is
| thinking about things in terms of, "perception of
| themselves as something special over software developer."
| that may be a problem unrelated to "design thinking," i
| can see how any creative thinking exercise can test
| people's interpersonal relationships differently than
| say, telling Claude what to do.
| codethief wrote:
| Uhh... What does Design Thinking have to do with UX? Sure, it
| could be used to come up with novel ideas for user interfaces
| but DT (nowadays) is an approach that's several orders of
| magnitude more general.
| bsoles wrote:
| Sure. Let me then call it this way: "Design Thinking is the
| Data Science of design: an attempt to gain influence in
| fields that you don't have expertise in."
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| I'd retort that software developers aren't domain experts
| either. At the end of the day you either luck out if domain
| experts and actual users are involved in eliminating toil
| (in the sense that Google defines that) and optimizing the
| user experience, while reducing friction in applications
| and providing insights into data.
| layer8 wrote:
| The fact that it's mostly being pushed by UX people.
| hliyan wrote:
| Isn't design thinking just... _thinking_? There may be
| different design methodologies you apply in different domains
| (e.g. civil, aeronautics, automotive, electronics, software),
| but once you abstract that away, what you get is thinking. I
| once attended a design thinking workshop many years ago, and no
| one there was able to adequately explain what design thinking
| was, except by means of jargon, metaphor, or example. My
| understanding of the subject has not advanced much further in
| the intervening years.
| gnosis67 wrote:
| I got the same reaction from that "how intelligence agencies
| think" YouTube video. Come now, "situational awareness"? Who
| needs a conspiracy to pay attention to their environment? And
| other mental tricks that people who must be told what to do
| may not come up with for themselves.
|
| Design however is a highly praiseworthy contemplation. There
| are those who do it well, and those who best learn to rip off
| what works as faithfully as means allow.
| atoav wrote:
| Well yes, but it is thinking from the other end, usually. The
| reason why companies may benefit from inviting a designer is
| that a good designer may both aesthetically and functionally
| take an entirely new approach from scratch, that has the end
| user in mind.
|
| This is something certain types of companies and
| organizationa fail at often, because their daily involvement
| makws them hyperfocused on certain aspects while they are
| blind to entire classes of solutions.
|
| That doesn't mean designers can be sprinkeled on every
| project and drive an evolutionary leap, but it _can_ be a way
| to explore the solution space.
| HillRat wrote:
| Design thinking, at least in its formal STS approach, is
| essentially applied sociology; it's about using various
| toolkits to build a sufficient understanding of a domain from
| the "inside out" (using desk and field research) so that you
| can design valuable experiences that build upon the expertise
| of those actually inside the domain. In this, it's a bridge
| between UX/product and users/stakeholders (technical
| stakeholders are admittedly too often an afterthought, but
| that's a process problem). If anyone comes in and attempts to
| blindly shove workshops at you without first conducting in-
| depth research, interviews, and field studies in your domain,
| then they are (without resorting to the One True Scotsman) not
| doing design thinking, they're doing cargo-cult brainstorming.
| (It's also a process orthogonal to agile development, since by
| definition it's a linear process that needs to be conducted
| prior to developing the actual product features and
| requirements.)
|
| The books and papers the OP cites are solid (Rittel and Webber,
| Buchanan, etc., though TRIZ, I think, is rather oversold), but
| in my experience the problem with most design thinking
| practitioners is that they aren't qualified sociologists and
| ethnographers, so a lot of design thinking is basically a
| reinvention of the last century of sociological middle-range
| theory and ethnographic principles, without being strongly
| informed by either, likely due to the field's foundation in
| early software requirements studies.
| randcraw wrote:
| That's a great answer that offers concrete insight into what
| design thinkers are trying to achieve. And it seems like they
| have a chance to succeed if they also employ iterative
| experimental methods to learn whether their mental model of
| user experience is incorrect or incomplete. Do they?
| HillRat wrote:
| Traditionally you use a lot of paper and experiential
| prototypes to iterate on, which doesn't cover everything
| but helps refine assumptions (I sometimes like starting
| with mocking downstream output like reports and report
| data, which is a quick way to test specific assumptions
| about the client's operations and strategic goals, which
| then can affect the detailed project). When I can, I also
| try to iterate using scenario-based wargaming, especially
| for complex processes with a lot of handoffs and edge
| cases; it lets us "chaos monkey" situations and stress-test
| our assumptions.
|
| More than once early iterations have led me to call off a
| project and tell the client that they'd be wasting their
| money with us; these were problems that either could be
| solved more effectively internally (with process,
| education, or cultural changes), weren't going to be
| effectively addressed by the proposed project, or, quite
| often, because what they wanted was not what they actually
| needed.
|
| Increasingly, AI technical/functional prototyping's making
| it into the early design process where traditionally we'd
| be doing clickable prototypes, letting us get cheap working
| prototypes in place for users to test drive and provide
| feedback on. I like to iterate aggressively on the data
| schema up front, so this fits in well with my bias towards
| getting the database and query models largely created
| during the design effort based on domain research and
| collaboration.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > people think that they can just come in and ...
|
| SOC2 is like this: a collection of security ideas thought up by
| a group of CPAs, so they can partake in software engineering.
| It's beyond bizarre.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| when Idea Guys(tm) never get told to buzz off
| tengbretson wrote:
| > "I like your design thinking, I do not like your design
| thinking people. Your design thinking people are so unlike your
| design thinking."
|
| - Gandhi
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| 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.
| bsoles wrote:
| 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.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Those experts and stakeholders have a day job (i.e. don't
| have time to do this) and are usually in silos. They are
| not experts in workshop facilitation, user testing,
| usability, rapid prototyping to iterate on ideas and to
| think more broadly.
|
| It helps to avoid parts of the innovator's dilemma and to
| break out of siloed thinking, i.e. involve stakeholders
| from other functions of the org.
|
| Not sure what you've been sold, but there are no special
| rules or rigid methods.
|
| But you're right, unfortunately there are consultants who
| use this term to sell you a new wunder method to solve all
| your product problems, but they are not really design
| practitioners.
|
| Same way as people took the Agile Manifesto and bastardized
| it to create SAFE.
| 7tythr33 wrote:
| What most people fail to realise is something quite simple about
| "design" - it's the discipline of bridging human behaviour and
| "things" (be that objects or software).
|
| Don Norman's book covers a lot on human behaviour, which is the
| correct lens through which to view "design".
| listenfaster wrote:
| I'm not a game designer, but 15 years after initially reading it,
| Jesse Schell's "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses" really
| sticks with me in any product design context. Organizing your
| thoughts around the lenses presented in this book makes for
| productive discussion, and can turn subjective points (an example
| might be how frictionless or not a UI element might be) into more
| objective points. I suggest checking it out. The author posted a
| deck of the lenses here: https://deck.artofgamedesign.com
| truenfel wrote:
| If anyone's interested in how environment shapes behavior: I
| wrote "Leave the Door Open." It's about designing spaces that
| reduce isolation and relax the nervous system.
|
| Based on research like the Rat Park experiments showing
| environment beats willpower. Practical room-by-room changes.
|
| The Substack for Open Enough Design is here:
| https://OEDmethod.substack.com and you can find a link to the
| book there too.
| amai wrote:
| Design thinking is a scam. I once had to took part in a design
| thinking class (my company wanted that). The consultant clearly
| were just waiting to see what kind of ideas we would come up with
| for some product. If an interesting idea came up in their classes
| they would later try to monetize it. So basically you pay them so
| they get your product ideas for free.
| ines_leal wrote:
| Highly recommend "A *New* Program for Graphic Design" by David
| Reinfurt as a more graphic design-focused overview of design
| thinking
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