Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

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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?

Me too don't understand the analogy between design thinking and data science. Both are too different. But even if I am a designer and teach design, I don't think there superiority here. it is how to benefit from each approach to achieve in intended goal.

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.

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.

it is normal to see people advocate their favourite tool or process. However, I always tell my design students to be critical and strategic when choosing their tools.

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.

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