Beyond Design Thinking, Towards Programming Thinking
Programming thinking is the thinking process in the way of how programmers solve problems.
Programming thinking is a computer-centered design method that solves all problems in a logical way based on reason rather than emotional approach.
One commonality of Airbnb, Pinterest, and the Woowa Brothers is that all of their CEOs are used to be designers.
IDEO’s Tim Brown is also a designer, and Tim Brown has marketed the concept of “design thinking” that applies the way designers work to business.
Design Thinking refers to “thinking the way designers solve problems in problem solving.”
Design thinking is a way to empathize with humans and to creatively solve problems based on emotion rather than reason.
When we look at the way designers work, they sympathize with the needs of customers through interviews with customers and work on several design proposals based on their preferences.
After they show several design proposals to the customer, customers select some of them.
Then, with the selected proposals, designers create proposals with various colors in different shapes.
By receiving feedback from customers and repeatedly performing these tasks, the final product that the customer wants is produced.
The work of designers has no results assigned.
How about the programmer’s task then?
Development begins with a clearly defined state of input and output. Therefore, it is important to produce the pre-determined results most quickly and stably based on reason rather than emotion.
Here I wondered if the way programmers solve problems could be applied more broadly to business and came up with the concept of “programming thinking”.
Programming thinking can be said to be ‘thinking in the way programmers solve problems.’
Programming thinking defines the number of all cases that can occur in a given state of inputs and outputs (results) and offers a solution.
Programming Thinking is process that clearly recognizes the object by systematically observing and analyzing the relationship between not only the visible cross section but also the various elements hidden behind the invisible surface (person to person, person to object, object to object).
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Google’s Sundar Pichai are all leading global company CEOs staring from programmers.
Why do CEOs of former programmer appear?
In the field of ICT, which is the core of the future industry, important decisions must be made faster and more accurately due to the pace of change and development. Every decision takes time, effort, and cost. Managers who do not know the technology are limited in the areas in which they can make judgments.
When making decisions in your business, you must go through the process of exploring all possible alternatives and then decide which of them is the most effective.
To find the best solution, it is necessary to find all unexpected risks through programming thinking (observation-exploration-expansion-segmentation-development stage) and devise a plan to operate the company most efficiently.
Programming thinking is not just for developers.
Anyone can expand and redefine their thinking process through programming thinking to further develop what they are doing.
While the business administration was the key competency to lead business in 2000s and switched to design thinking during 2010s, the key competence of leading business in 2020s is the programming thinking.
By the 2000s, Business administration was the key competency to lead business field until the concept of design thinking dominated the lead of business in the 2010s. In the 2020s, programming thinking will be the most powerful competency to lead the business.
5 Stages of Programing Thinking
- Observation phase: Observing objects in different perspectives.
- Exploration phase : finding all possible cases.
- Expansion phase : thinking deeply and extend the process concretely.
- Segmentation phase : breaking down process and subdividing it into multiple processes.
- Developmental phase : Expanding each process once again.
I’ve been working in IT for over 20 years, and I’ve seen great programmers go beyond just the ability to develop software programs, they excel not only in programming, but also in how to approach and solve all problems. So, I observed how the programmer solved the problem, thought about how to apply it to the business, and came up with a methodology called “Programming Thinking”.
