3 ms·

These comments seem to make a gloriously meta confirmation of the article's point. The article is saying that engineers (among others) have been known to optimi

by niccl 4y ago

These comments seem to make a gloriously meta confirmation of the article's point. The article is saying that engineers (among others) have been known to optimise for the wrong thing. He uses a possibly inappropriate example of faster dishwashers. Then many of the commenters (quite likely engineers) optimise their comments on the thing they know about -- desirability or otherwise of faster dishwashers -- rather than considering the merits of the main thesis And it's made even better by some commenters saying things about areas they appear not to know about, like the desirability of faster dishwashers for restaurants

jiggawatts 4y ago
Half of all engineers also cook at home(1) and nearly one hundred percent use plates and cutlery.(2) 1) I pulled this number out of a hat. 2) We likely don’t care about the opinions of people that eat food raw out of the garden using their hands only, at least with respect to dishwasher design.
barrysteve 4y ago
Making a faster dishwasher is exactly what engineers are trained to do. They get paid handomsely to optimize and improve existing forms and problems. Sure it's good to say engineers optimize the wrong stuff... but what's the solution? Be someone else? Start the dishwasher again from first principles? I love opening up the discussion with awareness, but a suggestion on the next step is helpful too.
- louison11 4y ago
  author here. Next steps would be to define with great details what the actual customer needs are, through diligent customer research, and identifying untapped opportunities. I don’t know if those currently exist for dishwashers. But in general, you’re looking for pain points that have been ignored by the market because nobody has fully grasped the picture of the customer needs before. In that way, frameworks like Jobs-To-Be-Done or customer personas, while they may seem very “mechanical” offer deterministic disciplines to maximize the chances of encountering fresh insights and thus build innovative solutions.
dgb23 4y ago
Before I got a job as a developer, which happened by chance because someone noticed that I was a hobbyist programmer, I actually worked as a kitchen help. A large chunk of that was cleaning and dishwashing. Let me tell you that if I didn’t have a very fast dishwasher, I couldn’t do my job well. I was already juggling the time between supporting the cooks, keeping stuff clean and the dishwasher going. I used a fast and effective dishwasher, but any speed improvement would be welcome, among other things. Engineers sometimes optimize for the wrong things, if they’re not involved with decisions and out of the loop. But the reality is that there’s many more things that could benefit from optimization than things that don’t. People definitely care about fast feedback loops and less time spent waiting. They might not always tell you in advance, because they assume it is like it is, but they _will_ tell you after the fact. People who don’t care are typically disconnected from actual usage. Whether that’s bosses and consultants who tell stories about “man hours vs cpu clocks” or engineers who excuse themselves with “premature optimization...”: they have that thing in common where they don’t know how it feels to wash a mountain of dirty dishes by hand, because the dishwasher cannot keep up.
- verinus 4y ago
  Well I read you comment in a way that you did not fully grasp what OP intended to say. Why people get so hung up on the speed thing? Yes there are situations where speed is of the essence, but for a private household it is not (statistically speaking in ~95% of the use-cases). And if I read op in good faith he never ever talks about dishwashers in a professional settings as there apply completely different rules...
mjaques 4y ago
Good to know I'm not the only one noticing this.
johnny_canuck 4y ago
I was surprised to pop into the comments and read the same in the first few top posts. Now I want a follow-up article from the author, haha.
- louison11 4y ago
  Author here. I don’t know if I’ll write a follow up but the comments prove my point for sure. I sense a lot of the naysayers here were triggered by the argument, which probably shows that I hit the right spot. Funny thing is none of what I’m sharing is novel, it’s based on the jobs-to-be-done framework, coined by a Harvard professor and used by some of the world’s most successful and innovative companies. It simply works. Beyond this framework, there is overall the idea that products should be problem-focused (customer research THEN development) as opposed to solution-focused (development THEN hoping it solves a real problem). For some reason, a lot of people get attached to their idea, their solution, and their ego prevents them from asking the hard questions (is this really useful to people?). Maybe I’ll write a follow up on the dynamics of denial involved in that. :-)

by niccl 4y ago

jiggawatts 4y ago

Half of all engineers also cook at home(1) and nearly one hundred percent use plates and cutlery.(2) 1) I pulled this number out of a hat. 2) We likely don’t care about the opinions of people that eat food raw out of the garden using their hands only, at least with respect to dishwasher design.

barrysteve 4y ago

Making a faster dishwasher is exactly what engineers are trained to do. They get paid handomsely to optimize and improve existing forms and problems. Sure it's good to say engineers optimize the wrong stuff... but what's the solution? Be someone else? Start the dishwasher again from first principles? I love opening up the discussion with awareness, but a suggestion on the next step is helpful too.

louison11 4y ago
author here. Next steps would be to define with great details what the actual customer needs are, through diligent customer research, and identifying untapped opportunities. I don’t know if those currently exist for dishwashers. But in general, you’re looking for pain points that have been ignored by the market because nobody has fully grasped the picture of the customer needs before. In that way, frameworks like Jobs-To-Be-Done or customer personas, while they may seem very “mechanical” offer deterministic disciplines to maximize the chances of encountering fresh insights and thus build innovative solutions.

dgb23 4y ago

Before I got a job as a developer, which happened by chance because someone noticed that I was a hobbyist programmer, I actually worked as a kitchen help. A large chunk of that was cleaning and dishwashing. Let me tell you that if I didn’t have a very fast dishwasher, I couldn’t do my job well. I was already juggling the time between supporting the cooks, keeping stuff clean and the dishwasher going. I used a fast and effective dishwasher, but any speed improvement would be welcome, among other things. Engineers sometimes optimize for the wrong things, if they’re not involved with decisions and out of the loop. But the reality is that there’s many more things that could benefit from optimization than things that don’t. People definitely care about fast feedback loops and less time spent waiting. They might not always tell you in advance, because they assume it is like it is, but they _will_ tell you after the fact. People who don’t care are typically disconnected from actual usage. Whether that’s bosses and consultants who tell stories about “man hours vs cpu clocks” or engineers who excuse themselves with “premature optimization...”: they have that thing in common where they don’t know how it feels to wash a mountain of dirty dishes by hand, because the dishwasher cannot keep up.

verinus 4y ago
Well I read you comment in a way that you did not fully grasp what OP intended to say. Why people get so hung up on the speed thing? Yes there are situations where speed is of the essence, but for a private household it is not (statistically speaking in ~95% of the use-cases). And if I read op in good faith he never ever talks about dishwashers in a professional settings as there apply completely different rules...

mjaques 4y ago

Good to know I'm not the only one noticing this.

johnny_canuck 4y ago

I was surprised to pop into the comments and read the same in the first few top posts. Now I want a follow-up article from the author, haha.

louison11 4y ago
Author here. I don’t know if I’ll write a follow up but the comments prove my point for sure. I sense a lot of the naysayers here were triggered by the argument, which probably shows that I hit the right spot. Funny thing is none of what I’m sharing is novel, it’s based on the jobs-to-be-done framework, coined by a Harvard professor and used by some of the world’s most successful and innovative companies. It simply works. Beyond this framework, there is overall the idea that products should be problem-focused (customer research THEN development) as opposed to solution-focused (development THEN hoping it solves a real problem). For some reason, a lot of people get attached to their idea, their solution, and their ego prevents them from asking the hard questions (is this really useful to people?). Maybe I’ll write a follow up on the dynamics of denial involved in that. :-)