Designers, Engineers, and Artists solving real-world shit
Designer, Engineer, and Artist, I learned yesterday the difference between each of these profiles during a learning session organized by Africa IoT and AI challenge and led by Ashraf Tawakkol a very knowledgeable professional of tech entrepreneurship whose presentation highlighted to me this gap in design thinking that I will need to fill I am still willing to use technology for solving people and organization problems. Having seen year over year the growing interest that design thinking has taken in the learning program of universities like MIT and Stanford I was still thinking that design thinking was again another buzzy key term like those that come around in the tech industry from time to time but I was wrong thinking that because there are very interesting pieces of knowledge in this field that could help entrepreneurs like you and I design and build solutions that solve real-world problems.
I grew up in an environment where art, at least a part of it, was present daily even if it was not the field that interested me most. This became true until digital production gets democratized and helped me see one of the first independent video film production units working hard for producing films this raised my interest in this part of Art because there were buttons to push, cables to connect, tapes to handles, cameras to hold and hopefully for me an early IBM computer to use, a computer that introduced me in the world of technology through gaming and just after through programming. Remember that many of us have been introduced to the world of programming because we were trying to design and build our own games after we had passed many hours playing amazing games. This early Computer introduced me to the world of Engineering and the many interesting problems solved using an engineering toolbox. From Art to engineering having the chance to adopt and use early the world wide web helped me see a world of possibilities, possibilities which years after made me think that I could be a successful tech entrepreneur turning possibilities into opportunities for designing and engineering utilities that solve real-world shit.
The world of entrepreneurship ignited again my passion for learning after this passion had been corroded by a disillusioning high Education path in a foreign country that taught me a lot but closed my eyes from the many interesting opportunities that were burgeoning in the world of worldwide web entrepreneurship, like blogging, Seo, E-commerce, Mobile Apps and consorts. From this learning path ignited by my willingness to be a tech entrepreneur, I got to know the importance of Design in products and services and in our everyday life. Like how I often do when I encounter an interesting field to learn I started reading books about this matter of design and following professional designers everywhere on the world wide web.
every field like Art, Engineering, or Design reinvents itself over and over using the advances made in itself and in other fields that may seem far to it. I think that that’s what happened with Design which get reinvented into what’s called design thinking by using the many interesting advances we have made in our understanding of psychology, cognitive science, behavioral science, and other fields to center the work of designers around us, human beings. I think that like design thinking all other fields should be human-centered meaning they should try hard to have empathy embedded in their everyday work. Empathy toward those who are impacted by what they do so If I was about to coin terms for emphasizing what I am trying to express I would say Work thinking for imitating what is called Design thinking but before coining terms it’s more important for me to get my hands dirty and my mind busy at learning this field of design thinking I underlooked during all these years of entrepreneurship and I believe that I will be able to fill the Gap like what I did with management, operations, finance, and marketing because it’s never too late to learn something.
I hope you learned something reading this if you don’t please apologize because time is a scarce resource.
