Tools for thought are a beautiful idea—inventions which can “change the thought patterns of an entire civilization.” But that’s a 30 year old quote. Why are they so hard to make? and I try to answer that question and suggest paths forward:
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Modern design practice demands deep engagement with users' context: interviewing, embedding, reading, empathizing. Such a powerful discipline… yet it's hard to shake the sense that the people creating profound tools for thought are doing all those things—somehow way more deeply.
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In numinous.productions/ttft, and I argue that the most powerful tools for thought express deep, novel insights into the underlying subject matter. It's not enough to empathize with users—the designer must be able to produce original research in the target domain.
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On a personal level, that idea was the emotional core of the piece for me. I've really struggled with my relationship to design. I've felt enthralled and empowered by its remarkable practices, but also instinctively uneasy that the work I most admire seems subtly "apart" from it.
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Developing this piece with has helped me tentatively resolve that tension: it's a yes-and.
This was a huge relief! I saw that the practices were somehow limited—but they were too predictive to write off, and I couldn't see how to subsume them.
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Tied some of this work together with 's recent post on "Intelligence killed genius" -- think it might be worth considering...
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Yes, I think it's right not to over-index on "genius" in the quoted passage. The important claim is that substantial domain expertise is needed, beyond what can be soaked up through "ethnography" typically performed in IDEO-esque design methods.
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Would you say top 5% (of domain practitioners) is sufficient... cause if so
"Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do
people who are 95%-ile constantly make mistakes that seem like they should be easy to observe and correct"
danluu.com/p95-skill/
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Highly contingent and not binary, of course… I suspect a lot of great ideas become possible at p95 domain expertise; perhaps some exceptional things at p99, p99.9. Designers are often not p50 relative to their target domain.
Not sure what the "exchange rate" is for dyads!
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(FWIW I'm certainly <p50 as a "cognitive scientist"! perhaps p95 as a reader among the general population, but certainly <<p95 in the type of close reading I'd like to augment, which I think is a very real limiting factor! Working on it, but a problem…)
How would you know if you WERE P95?
Or in negative
What can 1 in 20 cognitive scientists do that you can't?
What can 1 in 2 practitioners do that you can't?
Not to be mean, but if you don't know those, "certainly" would strike me as false modesty and inflated credentialism...
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On topic of fundamentals that all knowledge workers can (and should improve on)
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We often focus on sophisticated rationality techniques, like "pre-mortem".
More basic techniques, like "don't believe or say that for which you lack evidence" are often neglected.
I think that consistently applying basic techniques can be very effective
stefanfschubert.com/blog/2021/8/30
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