I witnessed time and time again that if you can give something a catchy name and somehow promise that doing / having that thing gives you an edge over someone else, you can make a lot of money.
I should try to make a course out of this single realisation (by repeating the same thing over and over) and call it "brand thinking, the most usefull skill a product manager can learn in the digital age". Or something.
The name seems to be taken, and their Markov Chain results (something about identity) seem to fit the name better than the one you are planning to run :)
Maybe with another name. Maybe you can create the research field of metabranding!
As much as I agree, given the sheer lack of ability in lots of companies to "have a think about things", giving it a proper noun might actually make it enough of "an thing" to allow it to happen.
Of course, if you're paying an external agency a hefty fee to run the workshop, that also makes it even more of "an thing" too.
Packaging things in a process and giving it a fancy name makes it easier to push (both in the sense of selling something for money and to sell it internally as something to implement), and the process might actually help to get results by making it harder for people to skip thinking about some things?
I went to a Design Thinking workshop during an internship and while it felt a bit odd and oversold, I also think the process adds something over just saying "think about it!"
Thinking is badly defined and can mean all kinds of things to different people. One key aspect of design thinking is that it tries to get a group of people to actually think about the same problem.
I took a design thinking course in college, and it was something the people in charge were pushing really hard.
Tbh, I'm not sure what the big deal was. To me, without any prior "formal" (read: academic) entrepreneurship knowledge, it all felt extremely obvious. It's the basic process that pretty much everyone uses to solve some unknown problem
Find a need -> define the need further -> brainstorm solutions -> pick a favorite, start building and prototyping -> test - iterate -> present final prototype - GOTO start if needed.
I guess it's decent learning for people that are stuck on creating solutions for unknown problems (i.e "solution waiting for a problem to solve")
Every time "design thinking" comes up the responses around here are similar: That's it's an obvious and somewhat natural process.
I think that's part of the point. It's a natural process for creative people with development experience and critical thinking skills. But those people are often not in charge of projects. Those people in charge need these concepts formalised into a process to even consider it. In my experience, many development frameworks come from developers trying to get average managers to sort their shit out.
When I was working for a large consultancy, I hosted a couple
of DT workshops. The whole thing is no magic. But one thing for what it is great for: it forces people to think from the customer perspective. Sounds trivial but especially for large and old companies that is a huge thing.
To everyone who thinks design thinking is just the obvious way to do things, I think you need something to contrast it with. In the same way that we cannot see anything innovative about "agile" without understanding the standard that was "waterfall."
Suppose we wanted to come up with a new product in the "old days". Or you ask an unenlightened person to come up with a product. What might they do?
Brainstorm, would be my first guess. You would brainstorm various products. So let's take the latest thought from @boredelonmusk:
"Eye tracking software that engages turn signals automatically when the driver (who has no regard for other humans and shouldn’t legally be allowed to be on the road or really be part of any modern society) doesn’t."
So there is an idea, and then maybe someone else will come up with another one and another. After that maybe we'll all vote on the best idea.
After that someone start implementing an early version to test. So let's say they mount a helmet on a person and they try to get the eye tracker to work properly. Once they have that working, they will try to get it hooked up to the blinkers.
Once the prototype is out, we'll see if we can mass produce it, and also start market testing.
With "design thinking", you would not start with brainstorming "ideas". You would brainstorm problems to solve. (People not putting on their turn signals). Then you would go out and see if that really is a problem, and maybe interview people. If its not a problem, you would discard it without anyone voting on it.
If you did discover its a problem, you would then test to see if people were interested in an eye tracker. You would do interviews and mockup a product to see if people would even bother to wear it.
Its not "just" thinking. Its a particular habit (a "discipline") of thinking.
> To everyone who thinks design thinking is just the obvious way to do things
Things always seem obvious as someone explains them, but not when you're wondering what to do without prior experience or knowledge of what works.
I have an idea of designs I like, I have no idea how to go through and replicate those designs necessarily and they may not be what my boss or the client wants. I've been led down paths of building awful designs by clients, but they're paying so... I just do what they say, till they realize what we realized long before the design was implemented (and trust me, no amount of telling them works).
> In the same way that we cannot see anything innovative about "agile" without understanding the standard that was "waterfall."
Yup. The most important thing to understand about "waterfall" that it was a strawman describing a hypothetical bad practice, created to contrast against better ways of managing projects. People who failed at reading comprehension ran off with this and started talking about waterfall as if it was a real thing everyone was doing.
> With "design thinking", you would not start with brainstorming "ideas". You would brainstorm problems to solve. (People not putting on their turn signals). Then you would go out and see if that really is a problem, and maybe interview people. If its not a problem, you would discard it without anyone voting on it.
This is barely "focus on problems to solve instead of particular solutions", and "verify the problem is actually a problem". Not following this is a trap everyone falls into more or less often, but alone that doesn't a design ideology make. We don't need the capitalized Design Thinking™ for this.
I've been involved in Design Thinking workshops, and my take is this: like Agile™, it's a core of good concepts. Not new concepts, just concepts that a random person may follow, but not figure out to name them and consider them explicitly. That core has accrued a large layer of nonsense, Capitalized Phrases, and other trinkets that make it look Serious. Is there a value in this? Not in terms of applying it to solving your problems. But definitely in forcing common sense down the throat of a company. Managing your bosses is unfortunately a thing, and a Named, Serious Methodology is frequently a useful vector to sneak in some reason that would otherwise be shot down by management.
17 comments
[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 44.9 ms ] threadAt one point a lady turned whispered to the rest of the class:
"Design Thinking is just thinking!"
And actually this is simply the case. How did "having a think about things" get its own proper noun?
I should try to make a course out of this single realisation (by repeating the same thing over and over) and call it "brand thinking, the most usefull skill a product manager can learn in the digital age". Or something.
It probably already exists.
The name seems to be taken, and their Markov Chain results (something about identity) seem to fit the name better than the one you are planning to run :)
Maybe with another name. Maybe you can create the research field of metabranding!
Of course, if you're paying an external agency a hefty fee to run the workshop, that also makes it even more of "an thing" too.
I went to a Design Thinking workshop during an internship and while it felt a bit odd and oversold, I also think the process adds something over just saying "think about it!"
I thought that was called "Philosophy" :)
Tbh, I'm not sure what the big deal was. To me, without any prior "formal" (read: academic) entrepreneurship knowledge, it all felt extremely obvious. It's the basic process that pretty much everyone uses to solve some unknown problem
Find a need -> define the need further -> brainstorm solutions -> pick a favorite, start building and prototyping -> test - iterate -> present final prototype - GOTO start if needed.
I guess it's decent learning for people that are stuck on creating solutions for unknown problems (i.e "solution waiting for a problem to solve")
I think that's part of the point. It's a natural process for creative people with development experience and critical thinking skills. But those people are often not in charge of projects. Those people in charge need these concepts formalised into a process to even consider it. In my experience, many development frameworks come from developers trying to get average managers to sort their shit out.
Design Thinking MOOCS:
Suppose we wanted to come up with a new product in the "old days". Or you ask an unenlightened person to come up with a product. What might they do?
Brainstorm, would be my first guess. You would brainstorm various products. So let's take the latest thought from @boredelonmusk:
"Eye tracking software that engages turn signals automatically when the driver (who has no regard for other humans and shouldn’t legally be allowed to be on the road or really be part of any modern society) doesn’t."
So there is an idea, and then maybe someone else will come up with another one and another. After that maybe we'll all vote on the best idea.
After that someone start implementing an early version to test. So let's say they mount a helmet on a person and they try to get the eye tracker to work properly. Once they have that working, they will try to get it hooked up to the blinkers.
Once the prototype is out, we'll see if we can mass produce it, and also start market testing.
With "design thinking", you would not start with brainstorming "ideas". You would brainstorm problems to solve. (People not putting on their turn signals). Then you would go out and see if that really is a problem, and maybe interview people. If its not a problem, you would discard it without anyone voting on it.
If you did discover its a problem, you would then test to see if people were interested in an eye tracker. You would do interviews and mockup a product to see if people would even bother to wear it.
Its not "just" thinking. Its a particular habit (a "discipline") of thinking.
Things always seem obvious as someone explains them, but not when you're wondering what to do without prior experience or knowledge of what works.
I have an idea of designs I like, I have no idea how to go through and replicate those designs necessarily and they may not be what my boss or the client wants. I've been led down paths of building awful designs by clients, but they're paying so... I just do what they say, till they realize what we realized long before the design was implemented (and trust me, no amount of telling them works).
Yup. The most important thing to understand about "waterfall" that it was a strawman describing a hypothetical bad practice, created to contrast against better ways of managing projects. People who failed at reading comprehension ran off with this and started talking about waterfall as if it was a real thing everyone was doing.
> With "design thinking", you would not start with brainstorming "ideas". You would brainstorm problems to solve. (People not putting on their turn signals). Then you would go out and see if that really is a problem, and maybe interview people. If its not a problem, you would discard it without anyone voting on it.
This is barely "focus on problems to solve instead of particular solutions", and "verify the problem is actually a problem". Not following this is a trap everyone falls into more or less often, but alone that doesn't a design ideology make. We don't need the capitalized Design Thinking™ for this.
I've been involved in Design Thinking workshops, and my take is this: like Agile™, it's a core of good concepts. Not new concepts, just concepts that a random person may follow, but not figure out to name them and consider them explicitly. That core has accrued a large layer of nonsense, Capitalized Phrases, and other trinkets that make it look Serious. Is there a value in this? Not in terms of applying it to solving your problems. But definitely in forcing common sense down the throat of a company. Managing your bosses is unfortunately a thing, and a Named, Serious Methodology is frequently a useful vector to sneak in some reason that would otherwise be shot down by management.