Some thoughts and ramblings
Design thinking has been a term and idea orbiting through my mind quite a lot recently. It comes into view and prominence through educational tangents, as a core developing principle towards newer and more robust approaches to learning and teaching. It also comes up quite often as I listen to more podcasts, especially those by Lex Fridman, which touch on computer science, engineering and physics. A lot of the success and innovation in those fields, and others, seems intertwined with the design thinking approach as well as approaching problems and topics from First Principles (something Elon Musk is very famous for).
As I try and educate myself, open my mind to what Design Thinking is, can be, and the real potential it has in different applications to who I am (educator, potter, friend, athlete, thinker, etc.) I find all these worlds colliding and several interesting ideas emerging, chaos and confusion, with new life from the debris of these comets and asteroids. And so, maybe I should try to order some of these ideas and share them, hopefully it’ll inspire some conversation and dialogue with my friends and help me understand it, and myself, better.
Episode #146 of the Lex Fridman podcast featured an incredible interview with Michael Mina, an immunologist, epidemiologist, and physician at Harvard. What really impressed me was his accurate assessment (from my small perspective and experience in the world) of the design flaws concerned with Public Health and the medical decision making process, particularly in the US, but I’m sure his analysis and insight applies to other countries such as Canada as well.