Noah Fang

@kingofark.bsky.social

1832 Followers 94 Following

noahfang.ca ambigram.ca Design practitioner, author and occasional speaker, working on design, strategy, and organizational transformation. Was creative director, UX/product manager, visual designer, editor, translator, programmer and more.

Hallucinated software, hardware, whatever, will be full of small lies and made up details, but so are current MVPs, so are current data models, so is everything new and provisional that people produce. People make stuff up all the time to fill in what they don't know and don't have time to find out, so they can move forward. (Mass Hallucination by Mike Kuniavsky)
…we forget the role that luck plays in decisions and outcomes. Someone might have had a terrible decision-making process and gotten lucky. Someone else might have done everything right but had rotten luck. Focusing on outcomes over process is known as the outcome bias, one of the many cognitive biases that lead to decision disasters. (Don't Follow Your Gut by Nir Eyal)
The truly helpless society is not one threatened by revolution but one incapable of it. (Political Order in Changing Societies by Samuel P. Huntington)
History isn't a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others. (Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari)
…by its very nature, a method is just a tool to make the practices of experts accessible to novices. But novices can't just mimic what the experts do. Experts make very complex cognitive leaps, based on lots of experience and a complete mastery of their trade. Novices can't, so just showing a novice how an expert works isn't very helpful. It may actually send the wrong message, suggesting shortcuts where there are none and discouraging them from developing their own expertise. (Deep Change by Kees Dorst)
The real test of your character is not how you deal with adversity— although that will teach you much. The real test is how you deal with power. The only cure for power is humility and the admission that your power comes from luck. The small person believes they are superior; the superior person knows they are lucky. (Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly)
When we use process and structure to fix cultural problems what we often get is more lying and cheating. Little lies become bigger lies. And the behavior becomes normalized. (The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek)
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car. (Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov)
Under the delusion of user-power, both use-situations and users themselves are designed to align with the designated distribution of power and agency set by the stakeholders in power, such as clients, institutions, or funding agencies. (The Corruption of Co-Design by Otto von Busch and Karl Palmas)
We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.... (The Tempest by William Shakespeare)
Most managers, to be sure, are good people; and it seems unlikely that a couple of years of pseudovocational training will spoil them. But it is foolish to imagine that they will behave well merely because they are told in business schools that they should regard themselves as professionals. (The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart)
Technical progress tends to be more tangible than design progress: it's very difficult to design the right solution, and fairly easy to technically execute many solutions. (101 Things I Learned® in Product Design School)
Refraining from asking for justification beyond managerial edict, tradition or fashion, is a key aspect of functional stupidity. It also results in the reproduction of problematic conditions and a shortage of what is sometimes referred to as 'voice' in the organization (Morrison, 2011). (A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations)
Importantly, design thinking is primarily a North American phenomenon, and not the universally applicable, culturally neutral practice it is assumed to be by its prominent practitioners. (Design by D.J. Huppatz)
The soft sciences are hard. The factors that shape human behavior are largely amorphous and likely infinite. This makes it very difficult to frame questions about people in scientific terms, identify reliable variables and controls for a study, and draw clear conclusions from the data. (101 Things | Learned® in Psychology School by Tim Bono)
Systemic design applies sensemaking skills such as visual storytelling and visual analysis, drawing out wisdom through dialogue, and knowledge translation through diagramming. (Design Journeys Through Complex Systems by Peter Jones and Kristel Van Ael)
In China, philosophy has been every educated person's concern. In the old days, if a man were educated at all, the first education he received was in philosophy. (A Short History of Chinese Philosophy by Yu-lan Fung and Derk Bodde)
When leaders take steps to protect their own interests, particularly when those steps are taken at the expense of others, they send a message to everyone else that it is okay to do the same. (Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek)
The American welfare state is politically vulnerable because it does not rest on a sense of national community adequate to its purpose. The nationalizing project that unfolded from the Progressive era to the New Deal to the Great Society succeeded only in part. It managed to create a strong national government but failed to cultivate a shared national identity. (Democracy's Discontent by Michael J. Sandel)
like lectures, non-fiction books don’t work because they lack a functioning cognitive model. Instead, like lectures, they’re (accidentally, invisibly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn: transmissionism. When books *do* work, it’s generally for readers who deploy skillful metacognition to engage effectively with the book’s ideas. This kind of metacognition is unavailable to many readers and taxing for the rest. Books aren’t pulling their weight. Textbooks do more to help, but they still foist most of the metacognition onto the reader, and they ignore many important ideas about how people learn.
If someone is only misinformed, you just need to provide them with correct facts and they can become rightly informed. But misinformation persists precisely because knowingness shields a person from learning. ("Knowingness" and the Politics of Ignorance by Brian Klaas)
In the same way that Taylor supplies the metrics required for managers to gain power over pig-iron loaders and the like, Ansoff and his planners give top managers the metrics they need to control middle managers. Strategic planning is a species of rhetoric—a kind of "expert talk" —that justifies the power of top management over the middle. (The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart)
There are too many well-meaning people who know better, who override their sensibilities and play along with what they see the mainstream culture rewarding, hoping to realize their goals for success. They play mind games, trying to believe that there's no better way to manage people, or interact with them, without jeopardizing their own aspirations and success. In the end it's all about keeping your job, getting ahead, and ignoring the costs. (Good People, Bad Managers by Samuel A. Culbert)
Democracy in its present form cannot survive the merger of biotech and infotech. Either democracy will successfully reinvent itself in a radically new form or humans will come to live in "digital dictatorships." (21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari)
You don't sell someone something by engagement, conversation and relationship. You create engagement, conversation and relationships by selling them something. (101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising by Bob Hoffman)
Most people appreciate those who: - Are genuinely interested in the work they are doing - Ask good, thoughtful questions - Have respect for their skills and beliefs - Are helpful (Why Design Is Hard by Scott Berkun)
Big government versus small government is in many ways beside the point. If government is successful as a platform, you could have small government and big services, just like Apple does with the iPhone. (Wtf? by Tim O'Reilly)
What can be a mistake politically is to assume that particular ideals— including social justice— can be something that society can just "arrange," through government, without considering the particular patterns of incentives and constraints inherent in the institution of government. (Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell)
Reading books or traveling yields one level of intellectual diversity, but nothing equals the power of working with people who implicitly bring those perspectives into everything they contribute. (How Design Makes the World by Scott Berkun)
Draw to discover what you see. Write to discover what you think. (Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly)
…people's moral commitments stem not from reason and reflection, but from deep-seated intuitions of which they are largely unaware. (Why We Work by Barry Schwartz)
According to Freire, students are not learning how to criticize society but instead only how to conform to society. For this reason Freire argues that the banking model of education is an oppressive system designed by oppressors to teach the oppressed to accept their oppression. (Nihilism by Nolen Gertz)
…the big ideas-the breakthroughs that change the course of science, business, and history—fail many times before they succeed. Sometimes they survive through the force of exceptional skill and personality. Sometimes they survive through sheer chance. In other words, the breakthroughs that change our world are born from the marriage of genius and serendipity. (Loonshots by Safi Bahcall)
Developed by the Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel, the idea that states should be able to conduct their own affairs without intervention from outside powers is a vital ingredient of the current political architecture. (Geopolitics by Klaus Dodds)
Going to work shouldn't dampen the human spirit. It never does when people feel they're working effectively, have their manager's support, are appreciated, and see themselves making progress toward personally important goals. In fact, under the right circumstances, work isn't even work; it's what a person wants to be doing. (Good People, Bad Managers by Samuel A. Culbert)
Design can only become the cure when anyone and everyone participates in design activities and allows their cunning intelligence to emerge and resist and subvert the systems of power so deeply embedded in our daily lives. (Persistent Fools by Thomas Wendt)
Politicians very rarely concede that they might have to sacrifice one aim in order to achieve another, but perhaps in reality they do. (Political Philosophy by David Miller)
A central feature of human interaction, and one of the features unique to our species, is the activity of asking others to explain themselves, to justify their choices and actions, and then judging, endorsing, rebutting their answers, in recursive rounds of the "why?" game. (From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Daniel C. Dennett)
There's nothing between the audience and the stage but some good illusion. (Computers as Theatre by Brenda Laurel)
Dreams to realize, mortgages to pay, and families to support, managers aren't in a position to look out for employees if it means forgoing the rewards they seek. Quickly managers learn to look out for themselves first, because who else will? In today's competing-for-credit work environment it's seldom the higher-level person to whom one reports. (Good People, Bad Managers by Samuel A. Culbert)
In the end, [managers] talk enthusiastically about progressive practices but don't commit to system change. And do they ever talk. Knowing change is needed, wanting to think themselves avant-garde and progressive, they speak enlightenment words. But it's old wine in new bottles. (Good People, Bad Managers by Samuel A. Culbert)
If you tell me that your idea is true, but I'm not allowed to question it, I wonder how much confidence you have in the truth of your idea. (Sacred Cows by Danielle Teller and Astro Teller)
With rare exceptions, every transit trip begins and ends with a walk. As a result, while walkability benefits from good transit, good transit relies absolutely on walkability. (Walkable City by Jeff Speck)
…scientists gradually learn how to grow better crops and make better medicines, whereas priests and gurus learn only how to make better excuses. (21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari)
…while experiences are propelled by the material qualities of the thing, it takes place in mind. (An Introduction to Service Design by Lara Penin)
One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar. (Oscar Wilde)
If you are working to make the world a better place, there are few experiences more rewarding and useful than having your thinking turned upside down. A shift in thinking is the essence of transformation. (Collaborating With the Enemy by Adam Kahane)
…many companies fail in innovation not because they do not have methods but because they have too many, and they mix and match them without a clear purpose. (Overcrowded by Roberto Verganti)
"To be, or not to be" now would be "What the fuck?" And that would be it. (Living With Shakespeare by Susannah Carson and Harold Bloom)
…over and over again, Al snake oil is appealing because those buying it are in broken institutions and are desperate for a quick fix. (Al Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor)
…studies show that venting tends to further increase anger and delay our return to emotional baseline. (101 Things I Learned® in Psychology School Tim Bono)
Economists often assume that markets do not touch or taint the goods they regulate. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark on social norms. Often, market incentives erode or crowd out nonmarket incentives. (What Money Can't Buy by Michael J. Sandel)
it involves more than just embracing the next wave of disruptive innovation and technology. The people, processes, and culture around the technology and innovation also have to change. Frankly, the technology part is easy. (Learning to Love Data Science by Mike Barlow)
Taylor feigned research where negotiation was required. This confusion of facts and values-or, more generally, the attempt to find pseudotechnical solutions to moral and political problems—is the most consequential error in Taylor's work and is the cardinal sin of management theory to the present. (The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart)
A power relation always implies that the person subject to it does something he or she would not otherwise have done, but it need not be something that is or is perceived as against his or her wishes or interests. (Power by Dennis Wrong)
This lack of curiosity was characteristic of China. The inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom (China's name for itself, meaning essentially "the center of the world") had little interest in the tales brought to them by foreigners. Moreover, there has never been a strong interest in knowledge for its own sake in China. (The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett)
Don't be the person who shoots down any feedback that doesn't go your way. You need people to see the problems in your work. Other people need to trust that you can handle objection. Take criticism well. Because you expect others to do the same. (Experience Required by Jr. Hoekman Robert)