Hybrid Thinking

Growing up I always approached problems with mundane techniques I learned from school and older people in my life. I grew accustomed to this system cause that’s was all I knew. That was up until I got to college. During my first semester in college, I took a Learning Framework class. This class was a means to introduce new models of learning and problem-solving. The setting was different from my other classes, it was collaborative and we solved problems with new methods I had never used. It was by far my favorite class during that semester. While taking this class I learned a technique that I took to other classes and phases of my life up Critical Thinking.

What is Critical Thinking? Critical Thinking is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue before coming to a conclusion. I liked it a lot because it involved careful observation before drawing an inference. I decided to pursue a career in UX/Product Design a few years after this class. And I was stunned when I came upon an even more superior technique in Design Thinking. It was much like Critical Thinking except it involved an extra process that made it significantly better, Iteration. In Critical Thinking, there’s no refinements or iteration after evaluation. Testing with the target audience was a very important aspect of Design Thinking. And iteration followed after based on the results of testing. Also, unlike Critical Thinking, it was a continuous cycle of iterative testing and refinement.

A couple of months later I came across one more interesting technique in Hybrid Thinking. This technique is very much like Design Thinking but more in-depth. In my own words, Hybrid Thinking is a technique that combines the linear model of thinking with a creative and adaptable model of thinking. Hybrid Thinking combines Biomimicry, Human Behavior, Collaboration, and Systems. In 2017 Vox Media made a video on how the best designs are imitated from Nature. An example was Japan’s Shinkansen Bullet Train redesign to reduce noise pollution whenever it exited a tunnel. The lead engineer Eiji Nakatsu, modeled the redesign on an owl, penguin, and a kingfisher. It not only solved the problem of noise pollution but was 10% faster and used 10% less electricity.

Human Behavior in combining our conscious and unconscious mind to solve problems. The best way to think of this is a computer’s ROM and RAM. ROM is very much like the conscious mind while RAM is like the subconscious. We can only do so much with our conscious mind at a given time. But the subconscious like the RAM has a bigger capacity. Hence, it can process at a higher and more efficiently. This makes it possible to approach problems intuitively and evolve as needed.

Collaboration, like the popular saying “Two heads are better than one”. I wrote a piece about the KJ Technique a couple of weeks ago. It takes a bunch of individual ideas, accessing, combining, and breaking them apart. These form a network of minds and solve problems more creatively and efficiently. And, Ecosystems is a model of problem-solving that integrating parts into an interdependent whole. Hence, making a coherent, seamless, and efficient system.

The Ring home system and Light as a Service (LaaS) are examples that reflect the total cycle of Hybrid Thinking. They are both able to adapt to users’ preferences and cut waste. I believe there’s going to be some more phenomenal implementation over the coming years.

Interested in diving deeper? Below are links to some interesting videos.

Arndt Pechstein’s TedTalk: Hybrid Thinking https://youtu.be/nb9Is68tQOQ

Vox Media: The world is poorly designed. But copying nature helps https://youtu.be/iMtXqTmfta0

Lexus X Ted: Hybrid Thinking-The Future https://youtu.be/sAbL7KspxCQ

Ray Kurzweil: Get Ready for Hybrid Thinking https://youtu.be/PVXQUItNEDQ