I am a data scientist looking for transitioning into design.
And I am trying to find programs that have a good emphasis on data driven design. I do not know much, but I think I am also more interested in a ‘product design’ type course. One that shall be helpful in becoming a Indie maker like you or Pieter Levels.
I was wondering if this could be a feature where each program has different tags and it’s easy to find a program with a particular focus…
Thanks a lot for everything.
Thanks for your suggestion! Here are my two cents on the “data-driven” design:
It might be hard to find UX programs that solely focus on “data-driven” design because the whole point of the UX discipline is about taking users’ opinions into account in the design process (mostly through qualitative approaches).
It can be technically challenging for a UX program to heavily focus on “data-driven” design unless the program has access to a large amount of data, and the students are equipped with programming skills and statistic knowledge to analyze those data. Even in the industry, only large companies with a large amount of data (E.g. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn…etc) are capable of doing designs based on data. And in this case, the team would likely hire data scientists to make sure the right scientific approaches are taken.
As a result, UX programs might not be the right direction if you wanna dig into the data side of things. I’d recommend looking into the directions of Data Science, Analytics, Statistics, and Computer Science.
Regarding the “product design” you mentioned, I think you are referring to people who do both design and development? I don’t think there’s a magical program that gives you everything. It’s more likely that a person starts with either design or code, and then gradually branches out into other skills. It’s worth noting that some programs might boast a wide variety of curriculum including design, development, and business. In my opinion, one can only expect to reach the “introductory level” of those things through the program. If you want to be a full-stack “maker”, the real-world experience and continuous self-learning are far more important than the degree. 
Kaiting!
Thank you so much for your detailed response to my novice questions.
You gave me the right term, ‘a full stack maker’ is what I strive to be. And yes it has to be learned through hustle rather than a structured program.
In the shorter term, I am interested in using my data science and ML skills in teams and products that care about the user experience. I think this kind of experience shall also be very helpful as a maker.
I was wondering what programs/ people/ companies I should keep an eye on. I consider a place like IDEO to be my dream company and MIT Media labs a dream college.
Also do you think we should move this discussion to a different thread?