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.

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.

# "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

  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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Make_Me_Think

I've been curating (mostly design) books on a digital library: https://links.1984.design/books

Here's their website for the book, along with some tools and useful instructional videos https://www.creativeconfidence.com/tools/

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.

Probably means this article wasn't written by AI!

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.

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.

Don Norman’s book covers a lot on human behaviour, which is the correct lens through which to view “design”.

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

GTFO with this hyperbolic language