Want to Make Better Decisions? Know the Difference between Engineering and Design Thinking
Want to Make Better Decisions? Know the Difference between Engineering and Design Thinking
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There are 4 general ways of thinking, says Dave Evans, who worked with Steve Jobs to design some of Apple's first products.
Those ways of thinking are engineering, optimize, anlytical, and design. But only 1 will shift your outlook on reality.
Now a professor at Stanford University, you can get amazing lessons from Dr. Evans and more top minds at Big Think Edge. Subscribe now.
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DAVE EVANS:
Dave Evans joined the Stanford Design Program in 2007 where he teaches the popular Designing Your Life courses. Evans' passion is to help undergrads and grads apply the innovative principles of design thinking to the wicked problem of designing your life after Stanford. Dave obtained his BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering and returns to Stanford following 30+ years of executive leadership and management consulting in high technology. Evans product managed the first mouse and early laser-printing projects at Apple, was a co-founder of Electronic Arts, and has consulted to dozens of startups and major corporations.
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What I got from this video: Much of our best thinking is in the realm of prototyping, so if you want to solve a "wicked" problem (one that has unclear criteria for success and is not reusable because the conditions are so specific) it's best to basically try things that are analogous to the problem, which allows you to create better prototypes until you have a solution. This is called design thinking, and it's useful because most of our personal human problems are wicked problems (ex: how can I be happier? or should I marry this person?) and you can't solve them easily with logical thinking.
More like prototyping is both ways of thinking and coming out with a clear solution
I think logical thinking is embedded in prototyping
types of thinking/problems: 1. engineering - clear, repeatable solns 2. business - optimization 3. analytic - used in research; premise, slice, questioning process 4. wicked - criteria for success unclear & constantly changing; will know what's right answer only when you find it, & answer won't be reusable; human problems, messy problems; find soln via iterations, trial & error till you get an idea types of prototypes: 1. engineering - starts with conclusion, solution-oriented 2. design - starts with curiosity, user-oriented Prototypes in design similar to minimum viable product
Thanks for summing it up.
Great summary! One slight caveat I'd add regarding the idea that "Prototypes in design similar to minimum viable product": Prototypes are questions (not demos): they’re focused on a single point of inquiry, should be incomplete, and create an experience The prototype creed is effectively: 1. Find the quickest path to experience 2. Doing is the best kind of thinking While building a minimum viable product *may* involve doing and let you answer the question "What might it be like to use this product?", it'd be neither quick nor focused on a single point of inquiry. I'd say a prototype in design is closer to "answering a pressing question by creating minimum viable experiences." I'm not sure there's a well-known correlate for that, which why design thinking makes a significant contribution. :)
Err whats 'solns'? You forgot systems and mechanical thinking...?
Really outstanding. The difference between “engineering thinking” and “design thinking” is truly useful, and an idea worth remembering.
This is what I was thinking about a few days ago. I don't have a single passion that I want to pursue but a few interests. I keep telling myself to try everything and see if something makes me want to do it more often or if I can see myself doing it for a long time. I always thought this kind of experimentation will lead me nowhere, instead it might confuse me even more. But after watching this video I think I might go ahead with experimenting.
Rajiv Krishna yes do it 👍👍👍 do not l9sten to people who want to put you on a neat little track or stuff you in a nitch
How did it go?
What have you learned
@amir @kaiwo I've learnt that only if you put in effort to do something, if you want to do something, you'll be resilient and will go ahead in the path. I tried a few things, like sketching, programming, poetry, psychology along with my career interest that is supply chain. Psychology I liked as a side gig, very meaningful to me. Will be doing it on the side, learning and engaging more in this as a side interest. Other interests withered away as I didn't put effort or I simply found them boring. My career interest, I got an opportunity and instead of resisting the job(it's tough, long hours) I'm making my close people cheer for me. This way I'm building a support system who's always there for me.
@@rajivkrishnatr motivational! Thank you 🙏
I like this concept of not always having to risk everything in order to be successful
more of this guy
Yess...
YAY KENNY
maybe, but this channel already has too much click bait
After watching this, I realized that I have been prototyping my career life since I decided to stop working in corporate. 😊 It’s comforting to know this. My generation, like the older ones in Asia, were not given that much freedom to do prototyping for our future self.
Reality testing assumptions is crucial. Small tests are a great way to do that. Ready a book about this topic, making decisions in general. I forget the title but the framework they put out is W.R.A.P. Widen your options Reality test your assumptions Attain emotional distance Prepare to be wrong. really helpful stuff
It seems so
Good talk. One aspect I am exploring is that there are many hidden interest in wicked problems. I believe your approach does a great job of bringing them to the surface.
After knowing the other types of thinking, I feel I could switch revolve my brain when faced with problems that require thinking specifically. Great video, will definitely come back!
that was very educational and kinda inspiring. thx for this
A good advise. Although in practice the realisation of a dream often wants concentration of effort and money. (Like Clausewitz teaches about succes in warfare: choose the enemy’s weak spot well, and throw all you got at it.)So there often will not be a budget for trial and error.
Cool
I watched three times to get him, he sees design as a solve problem thing, and approach using the design thinking from standford. Very good presentation. i resume it like this... "the difference between engineering thinking and design thinking" design thinking use prototyping to define what i want to do, and engineering how to to it in scale and properly that works and pass industry quality tests and operations in the firm. Good work.
Great video Sir, thank you for sharing
Great video. I have to ask though, was Dave Evans have anything to do with the "hockey puck" circular mouse that Apple created? I've used that for years as an example of form getting prioritized over function resulting in an epic fail.
That's really great advice and I think this greatly applies to web development too!
I am so grateful that KZhead exists. This content is pure gold
Very interesting insight. I like how he distinguishes that one is out of curiosity while the other is trial and error. One doesn’t have a conclusion but comes up with an idea and one comes up with a conclusion but starts from an idea. How to merge them together is prototyping as he called it. Simple but often overlooked if you focus on one thing only
THIS GUY IS AWESOME!
Best piece of free advice you can get!
Love this!
Loved it!
awesome video. a lot to say especially the way he describes thinking outside the box. tries to get into the nitty gritty of the box. like he says how to experiment learn innovate teach too. i say it many times ill say it again we live in the age of enlightenment. now to get ourselves a proper compass.
What a guest in bigthink the man who develops the mouse for the mac, recently in watched a documentary about Sapper he worked doinh design thinkin ptototyping first and the came the stage, what to do and how, then they do engineering prototyping. And for a product he took a lot in the design stage to get it right then in engineering even more because they have to make it at scale and safety and all that. Thanks Bigthink good work
Sorry bro but I had a stroke trying to read that.
Wow! Very interesting. Thanks
Absolutely magnetic speaker, although the message that was trying to be conveyed wasn't very clear to me. Didn't know what I was supposed to get out of this video
Maybe it tells you that making decisions should be like building a prototype. Don't expect you're gonna live it for the rest of your life, or make the same decision for the same problem again. Because your decisions are like products. You'll never make a perfect product that can solve every human problem, that's why you can only keep trying to make a better one. Keep trying things, be it jobs, business, anything. That's how I comprehend it.
I like that, thank you
kzhead.info/sun/qrOrndZtooZjZ3A/bejne.html
LOL. It's a great talk. What you are supposed to get out of is, among other things, clearly spelled out in the title.
Raymond Lai that's the point. He didn't really answer the question from the title. It was still insightful though. I'm thinking the answer is in there but I have to make a little more effort than I'm used to with today's videos.
I want to push the "I loved It ' Where is it??? These is amazing. Incredible!! It is just so cool!!
Outstanding.
Nice insight.
Watched this twice. Great info. in zillions of areas.
Thought provoking, educational and easy to digest. Thank you.
So basically then, "try shit"
"... a little bit at a time before jumping in headfirst and risking it all" Basically he means that if you're unsure about a decision, you probably don't know enough about that decision in the first place.
@@RockySmithsen Then how to ask the right questions if you don't understand the problem
@@metasamsara You do ask questions, before fully committing to something, and having to do more damage from backing out. When deciding on a college, go and visit it. Ask people there about it, and do your research instead of enrolling right away, then dropping out midway through a semester after you realize you don't like it. Before marrying someone, get to know them by asking personal questions. Don't marry them at first sight and then pull out the divorce papers once you find out they snore or whatever. These are highly exaggerated examples, but that's what I think I meant back then.
He sounds more convincing than you tho
Subscribed. Anyone that thinks this closely to myself has earned it.
At the very least you become a generalist Which is fabulous
Brilliant
So, hie's basically describing inductive and deductive reasoning?
This just blew my mind! The fact that you can use design thinking around your life like Dave mentioned is fascinating to me!
Nice ! Philosophical-Theoretical-Scientific all wrapped into one video
Engineering and designde decisions goes hand in hand !
Those groovy 70's
nice talk
I don't know about that problem classification. I mean, you can't build new York city again similarly to why you can't build a big bridge again. But, the could be, for both problems, a set of axioms that could lead you to take the right decision.
This should be longer. Each of the points needs to be clearly defined and demonstrated with an example. Otherwise, it’s a excellent.
Cool, very Ian Malcolm
What i gather from this is to aspire more to possibilities rather than fixed end goals.
Can someone suggest books about decision making. thanks
Thinking Fast & Slow - Daniel Kahneman Fascinating book on the mind.
I wish “thought designer” had been a popular career idea when I was a college student 🤩 I am excited to see what these kind of human centric ideas can bring in the (new) age of AI
Writing music falls in this category. You have an idea but not sure where to go with it. So many influences can direct me or I can just keep pushing till something comes up. I play something different but it works. I'm happy.
Now that design thinking has placed itself in the job of product/offering creation (something I have no problem with..it’s a good way of approaching the creation of great products) where do I go for the “craft designers” I need to tell a story visually? Did they get a new name I can google? And should we start calling product execs that create great offerings “honorary designers”. This practitioner of “english major thinking” would like to know. ;)
... yea i still don't know if i should get back with my ex
yelixir don’t do it. Try some different people. Lots of them.
you left them (or they left you) for a reason. Don't do it, trust me
3 years later.... let me guess you either didn’t, or you did but it didn’t work out?
The internet requires an update bro. What happened?
@@HashimAziz1 Soz for the late reply, but it turned out bad, I talked to her and things went very downhill. Didn’t work anything out, things got traumatic. Didn’t get back together just fuked myself up :/
Late to the game but anyway… I think the ideas here are great, but you are assuming that the whole audience can visualize what you are talking about, which may not be the case. I think it would be great to add some visuals to these videos making them even better! Thanks for sharing all these ideas
This should be taught in every high school
Design = Hypothesis, Engineering = Experiment. This is simply using the scientific method.
He's cool
Good points here, but Apple's mice are among the least ergonomic products that I ever tried.
So, test life, observe results, fine tune toward a goal, and test again, rinse and repeat, pile knowledge, recursive reflection, detect patterns, deduce laws and mechanics, properties and tendencies, find a sens of the nature, and rediscover it anew but they are bits of reality, they are never exactly the whole picture, a prototype is just that, a prototype, it can get close, but it will never be the actual experience, what I mean is you don't get guarantees from prototypes, there are no guarantees, except perhaps the laws of physics, which we don't entirely understand anyways so hone, but don't ever expect guarantees, you could in fact be missing on something else right in front of your eyes ;)
I like the design way of thinking, albeit I am an engineer
That's ... that's a very convoluted way of saying "I don't know."
exactly. How can anyone prototype what he want or thinks of wanting to be or do something that is on the scale of life changing, and make lots of prototypes and designs, trying each and every one of them to reach the desired conclusion, I mean how is that can be possible?! even if he don't have a day job that occupy his time, he won't have the resources or the accessibility or the possibility to do such a thing. yes it is theoretically logical, but physically inimplementabl. talking is easy and makes things looks great.
So, basically.... deductive and inductive?
good point ... thanks
03:24 to the point!
In short, try before you buy. Try with prototypes and minimum viable products before you invest entirely. Check your proof of concept, is this what you want, does it work, is it designed well
Turbines turn 100,000 rpm?
So, field research?
I see this as having an application in Law. Consider the concepts of eye witness accounts, truth and justice. A retired attorney, Harvard educated, told me that the least reliable form of forensic evidence is eye witness account. I have heard that truth and justice do not exist. Perhaps these examples do not qualify as ‘engineer thinking’, but they represent our highest ideals. We might never achieve any of these, but it is important to use them as guidelines. Prof. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford said in a lecture on human nature that given our cognitive limitations moral decisions are best made with a balance of emotion and reason.
I know he only mentioned Berkley once, but that might as well had been the only word he said.
Thank you all very much
The first mouse I had, had two wheels with no ball in the under side. I don't like those over-hyped kind of made-up/"brandized" definitions of common concepts as something new and revolutionary. It makes it seem like everyone before the 70s or so were robots who always started with conclusions in mind, never innovated. Perhaps all inventions (of engineering) before then were given by aliens. I like the stress on not starting with the conclusion in mind and just trying to prove it, though. But "exploration of possibilities" and "invention" are more clear phrasings for that than design thinking. Design is just a synonym for "project" (actually, of "drawing"), does not necessarily entail a freer exploration of possibilities or invention.
2 buttons was the only thing microsoft ever did right.
Billy Bong Thorton?
somehow, listening to this guy makes me feel like i wasted my life as a servant rather than going to school to be an engineer
What examples of wicked problems are there?
As an engineer, the attempt to bin engineering like he does could only be done by a non-engineer. Most of what I do is what he calls design, to which I then apply business (optimization) to, and then the 'engineering' at the end. I do work in a special place where almost everything is a single-purposed, single-designed, prototype though. I dislike his theory.
all he's saying is that it's a different skill, not that engineers can't do it.
Then you will be disappointed to learn that Dave has both a BS and an MS in mechanical engineering from Stanford. The technical and business mindsets can help you build the thing right, but it takes a very different mindset (and design isn't the only one, but it's a good one) to know the right thing to build.
This is the small steps approach but sometimes it is not realist. Example should I move to this country ? Checking as a tourist is not enough you need to work there to have a real idea so take a big steps with high cost. You cannot cross a river halfway.
So you never know until you try. Got it.
True, but more specifically, he's saying you don't have to make a lifelong commitment every time you want to try something new. Rather, for example, find multiple opinions from different people who have done what you're about to do.
right ... life is lika boxa chocolates
Based on some of the recent speakers I was considering unsubscribing from this channel but this guy has changed my mind.
Who? Penn??
Kenneth McCormick Nah, I've listened to his podcast so I'm used to him. The internet psychology woman presented some shaky arguments to bolster her point but that guy wanting to have people compete for the privilege of giving their ideas to a company was the one who irritated me the most.
Bruce Dunn Skipped that one. Luckily I guess... I thought of Penn because his witty nature + very public atheism puts a lot of conservatives off. Personally, love the guy. Probably my 5th favorite person that I haven't met.
Your idiot for not exposing yourself to different opinions even if you don't agree with it
+Mona AI That's one way of looking at it. Another would be that when calling someone an idiot in print you should take care not to confuse 'your' with 'you're' so as not to undermine your point and making your insult self-referential.
1:02
Actually soil conditions vary, even if building same bridge.
Thomas Sutherland soil, wind, traffic, the kind of traffic, weather, climate, earthquakes, ice, salt or fresh water, project deadline, materials available just to name a few
Just do it. Try. Learn the work by doing the work
The diamonds are at 4:55
We need more from this guy, extremely smart
Xerox have the mouse first?
I was designing a wheelchair for a paraplegic friend of mine and he said to me: "before you begin please borrow one of my chairs and go to the mall with it... pretend you are paraplegic for a few hours... then design me one"!
This is a fabulous video. Elon Musk is known to have said, "Design is easy; Production is hard" It has now become clear to be that "Design Thinking" is at the core of his assertion - "Production is hard" because that is where you learn the most how the final output should be.
'Buy the farm?'!!
This is why I'm a web developer, not a web designer.
HE STOLE MY GLASSES
Prototyping, try try again
Here I am watching this video 4 years later and thinking "damn... Tesla might actually be able to make a humanoid robot" ... they prototype everything!
I think design lies somewhere between engineering and art
basically, try things out before committing to it
This sounds like that they invented the mouse at Apple. This is not the case. The direct predecessor was Xerox, and many others before that, check out wikipedia about computer mouse.
He is basically explaining how SpaceX went from Regular Rockets to Falcon Heavy. Design thinking is Elons secret recipe. Wonder if he picked that up from his time at Stanford
Hope you brought your notebook
I could listen to this guy describe paint drying. Sounds like Jeff Goldblum a little
"Fuck around and find out"
Was quite complicated for me😅
For the mouse example, seems to me like the only difference between these types of thinking is frame of reference. You could easily say the conclusion is a "comfortable, intuitive to use mouse" and that would automatically make it an engineering problem ?
I interpreted the title as a sociological discussion, and I got a design discussion. :/
So... Trial and error?