Classes

My courses this quarter have introduced me to 2 beautiful ways of thinking about problems. The first, called design thinking bootcamp is all about applying “design thinking” to problem solving. Design thinking, or user centered design, is a process created and perfected by the design community at Stanford and IDEO, a legendary design consulting firm that started out of Stanford. The essence of design thinking is that all thought and actions must stem from the needs and insights learnt from one’s users. Throughout the quarter, I’ve been amazed at how much I have learnt by just interacting with users and having “empathy” for their needs. No class has ever thrown me out of my comfort zone as much as this class. The entire philosophy of “bias towards action”, “fast and cheap prototypes” and failing fast and often have often overwhelmed me, but have given me confidence in my ability to identify the real problems and use the process to solve the problem.

Decision analysis, on the other hand, is about making the best decision given whatever information one has available. The class is taught by Ron Howard, who invented the  field four decades ago. Some belittle it as a mere jargonization of logic. But people often don’t use logic in decision making and base decisions on emotion. By providing a formal structure and language to think about any decision or uncertainty one is faced with, DA gives one an opportunity to make a well reasoned decision rather than merely an instinctive one (instinct is good, but not every time).

While DA in the academic form is a probabilistic tool people study for use in strategic consulting, I am attracted to it for its applicability to everyday thinking. Internalizing a thought process in 8 weeks though, is daunting. And therein lies the test of the student.