An in-depth look at 6 off-the-radar books to help you think like a better UX designer.
1. Problem-Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People — Ken Watanabe
Brief Summary: This book was written as a simple introduction to problem-solving for Japanese schoolchildren but became a hit in the business world. It’s a great, simple primer on how to approach what can be an enormously complicated, broad, and complex topic. Problem-solving is broken down into four easy-to-understand steps.
- 1. Understand the current situation.
- 2. Identify the root cause of the problem.
- 3. Develop an effective action plan.
- 4. Execute until the problem is solved, making modifications as necessary.
My 3 Main Takeaways:
- 1. Overthinking is a killer when it comes to problem-solving. When you take action on a problem, every result or piece of feedback you get is another opportunity to reflect, learn valuable lessons, and course correct. Minor improvements over time make a massive difference in outcomes over the long term.
- 2. Big, complex problems can be approached by first identifying root causes and then breaking them down into smaller, manageable problems. A logic tree map is a useful visual tool for breaking down problems into their constituent parts and exploring other questions and hypotheses stemming from the issue at hand.
- 3. Collecting and analyzing data should never be done without first clarifying the question you are trying to answer. A solid plan should be developed first to avoid being buried in an avalanche of information. First, define the issues you are trying to solve. Next, state your current hypotheses and rationale. Last, list the analyses, actions, and information required to prove or disprove those hypotheses.
Quote: “When you do take action, every result is an opportunity to reflect and learn valuable lessons. Even if what you take away from your assessment seems to be of small consequence, all of these small improvements taken together make a huge difference in the long term.”
2. The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI — Paul Leonardi & Tsedal Neely
Brief Summary: The Digital Mindset is a book about how in a data and algorithm-driven world, we all need new ways of thinking, seeing, interacting, and acting to be effective communicators and doers in a rapidly changing world and always-evolving business and social environment. The authors focus on three different approaches.
- 1. Collaboration: Increasingly, we will have to learn not only to be able to work with lots of different people in different roles, in different locations to tackle complex challenges, but we will also have to learn how to work with and use artificial intelligence effectively to augment our human capacities. Working with AI and working with humans will be two different skillets that require different mindsets.
- 2. Computation: Data and Analytics can be great tools for understanding and leveraging solutions, but they also can be challenging to understand if you aren’t a data scientist or statistician. Interpreting data wisely means learning how to separate signal from noise and identify what pieces of data matter in context to the problem you are trying to solve.
- 3. Change: Digital systems constantly evolve in ways that often cannot be controlled entirely. Any modern digital system is a stack of all different technologies, pieces of software, and services all knitted together for a common purpose and to solve a particular set of problems. Because of this, data security is never foolproof. Part of what it means to have a digital mindset is accepting this fact and learning how to mitigate risk with regard to potential security flaws in the system at large.
My 3 Main Takeaways:
- One helpful concept presented was the 30% rule when it comes to understanding complex technology. If you can get your head around 30% of the essential concepts in any given technical niche (like AI or blockchain, for example), that will serve as a good base from a business communication perspective to be able to converse effectively with people in the field who have much deeper technical knowledge than you do.
- Adaptivity and curiosity are common threads that link all the skills mentioned throughout the book. Building digital systems is a complex process that would take many lifetimes to master, and even then, things are constantly changing as new technologies are developed and integrated. Being able to adapt, constantly learn and leverage the knowledge of others is of the utmost importance.
- A commitment to constantly running experiments and testing hypotheses is a core tenet of a digital mindset. One way you can help ensure that you are interpreting data correctly is by running well-crafted but low-stakes tests first. This is an actionable use of data that gives immediate feedback and real-world results.
Quote: “Digital transformation is not a one-and-done; it’s a state of perpetual transition; your task is not simply to adapt, but to be adaptive.”
3. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man — Marshall McLuhan
Brief Summary: This one is a bit more of a heady and academic read and has some dated language since it was written in 1964. In McLuhan’s terms, media is any technology or tool that extends our capabilities as humans. His central hypothesis can be boiled down to the idea that the tools we use to interact with the world have a profound, almost invisible power to shape how we think, interact with each other, and live our lives day to day.
My 3 Main Takeaways:
- McLuhan’s phrase, “The medium is the message,” was iconic. It means that with any information being conveyed, the content can’t be divorced from the method of delivery it’s being communicated with. For example, with a TV news broadcast, the medium of a half-hour cable news show shapes and, in some ways, dictates the content of what is communicated. This applies to everything, and the internet conveys information by its own set of rules. The content and the delivery method can’t be seen as separate entities.
- Reading a book written in the 60s that so accurately prophesied the beginning of the 21st century and the rise of the internet is fascinating. One of his most astute observations was that what he termed “electric technology,” or what would become the internet in recent decades, is a tool to extend our central nervous systems into the world. In his words…. “the wheel is an extension of the foot, the book is an extension of the eye, clothing, an extension of the skin, electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system.”
- Again, to paraphrase McLuhan, mechanical technology (cars, roads, supply chains) explodes, while electric technology (the internet) implodes. This is more of an observation on my part, but I think a lot of the perceived fragmentation that we see in the culture at large over the last decade-plus is what would inevitably happen when you take highly individualized people formed by the legacy of the mechanical age and link everyone’s brains together via Twitter and Facebook. Suddenly, we all can see what everyone else is thinking.
Quote: “The alphabet (and its extension into typography) made possible the spread of the power that is knowledge, and shattered the bonds of tribal man, thus exploding him into an agglomeration of individuals. Electric writing and speed pour upon him, instantaneously and continuously, the concerns of all other men. He becomes tribal once more. The human family becomes one tribe again.”
4. Think Like A Freak — Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt
Brief Summary: Think Like a Freak takes the ideas of popular author and podcaster economists Steven Dubner and Steven D. Levitt and distills them into an easily digestible framework and set of lenses for looking at the world. It expands on work from their hit books Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics and takes a similar short story-based case study approach. Their big ideas can be outlined as follows;
- 1. Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life.
- 2. Knowing what to measure and how to measure it can make a complicated world less so.
- 3. The conventional wisdom is often wrong.
- 4. Correlation does not equal causality.
- 5. Smart people often are the most prone to confirmation bias.
- 6. People are often too busy to rethink what they think.
My 3 Main Takeaways:
- One of the best mindsets you can take to approach problem-solving is shelving your moral compass. When you are already biased to the obvious “rightness” or the “wrongness” of a given problem or issue, it’s much, much more challenging to see root causes for what they actually are because you are starting with an assumption that’s nearly invisible to your awareness.
- Thinking Like a child is another excellent mindset for problem-solving. Small children aren’t afraid to ask dumb questions and look stupid in front of their peers. They are also relentlessly curious. If you’ve ever heard a kid string together a chain of why questions until they get to the bottom of something, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
- When trying to crack a particularly difficult problem, sometimes it requires taking a step back and redefining the problem you are trying to solve to put yourself on the path to different solutions. Tunnel vision is a very easy trap to fall into.
Quote: “If it takes a lot of courage to admit you don’t know all the answers, just imagine how hard it is to admit you don’t even know the right question.”
5. How to Take Smart Notes — Sonke Ahrens
Brief Summary: This book is based on a man named Niklas Luhman’s note-taking technique called Zettelkasten. Luhman came up with the idea in the 50s, so this book takes the overall gist of the method and adapts it to use with modern software. The main idea, however, is simple. Instead of organizing notes by topic and subtopics where info gets stored but often forgotten, they are organized into only three categories where information can mingle with other ideas in the same physical and mental space. The point is to ensure that notes turn into actionable output without being forgotten.
- 1. Fleeting Notes are quick information reminders and are disposable within a day or two.
- 2. Permanent Notes will never be thrown away, and take the quick info gathered from the fleeting notes and summarize it in a more permanently understandable way.
- 3. Project Notes pertain to a specific, actionable project being worked on and pull info from permanent notes. After the project is over, these notes can be archived.
My 3 Main Takeaways:
- When researching something and taking notes, that information is only useful if it will be helpful and actionable in the future. This system does an excellent job in helping to tame the chaos of lots of different insights and sources of input, so you can creatively build connections between ideas as a project grows.
- Avoid reading things passively because we forget much of what we read. Highlighting or underlining when reading is the first step in retaining information that can be used or combined with other ideas down the road.
- Organizing notes by project has two main advantages; it ensures information saved is highly actionable. Secondly, it ensures that vastly different types of media, inputs, quotes, data, ideas, etc., can all be in the same mental space where they can be combined into new insights.
Quote: “On one hand, those with wandering, defocused, childlike minds seem to be the most creative; on the other, it seems to be analysis and application that’s important. The answer to this puzzle is that creative people need both. The key to creativity is being able to switch between a wide-open, playful mind and a narrow analytical frame.”
6. Business Made Simple: 60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity and More — Donald Miller
Brief Summary: Business Made Simple is a crash course in everything you need to know about how modern businesses work and how to fashion yourself into a high-value employee, leader, entrepreneur, or business owner. There are nine primary areas of focus for growth; character, leadership, personal productivity, messaging, marketing, business strategy, execution, sales, and management.
My 3 Main Takeaways:
- 1. A business can be thought of as an airplane. You need four main components for it to run smoothly. A business exists primarily to solve a problem or set of problems for customers.
- Plane Body: Overhead — It takes resources and people to solve problems effectively. Those resources might include salaries, medical benefits, rent, office supplies, etc.
- The Wings: Products and Services — Wings give the entire plane lift. Without revenue from selling these products and services (the air in this metaphor), the plane can’t take off.
- The Engines: Sales and Marketing — These two work in tandem and move the entire operation forward. Marketing is generally cheaper than sales, but both allow the business to grow and scale.
- Fuel: Capital and Cash Flow — Money is what fuels the business. It goes without saying that having the money on hand to grow a business is the most critical factor in success.
- 2. Being able to tell a great story is one of the best business skills you can develop for success. Why? Great storytelling gets people to buy into ideas emotionally. With so much competing for our daily attention, being able to tell a compelling story that will cut through the noise will not only help you sell to your customers but will help align people in an organization as well.
- 3. One key to personal productivity is blocking out your time daily. This means scheduling time to do deep work towards meaningful goals in advance so that requests on your time from clients or co-workers don’t erode your ability to focus. Scheduling no more than three essential tasks per day prevents spreading limited personal attention too thin.
Quote: “What’s the most important thing you can do today? If you can answer that question, morning after morning, you are in an elite group of professionals.”