Problem Solving

Sometimes the problem is to discover what the problem is.

You can’t look a big problem too directly in the eye. You have to approach it somewhat obliquely. But you have to adjust the angle just right: you have to be facing the big problem directly enough that you catch some of the excitement radiating from it, but not so much that it paralyzes you. You can tighten the angle once you get going, just as a sailboat can sail closer to the wind once it gets underway.

Disadvantages can be viewed as “problems” and we can take an energy-expensive approach to "get rid of the problem", or we can think of everything as being a positive resources: it us up to us to work out just how we can make use of it.

“Problems” can be intractable weeds, huge boulders lying on the perfect house site, and animals eating garden and orchard produce. How can we turn these into useful components of our system? Boulders on the perfect house site, for example, can be incorporated into the house itself, for beauty and as a heat storage system.

Dr. Weaver lists three stages of development in the history of scientific thought: (1) ability to deal with problems of simplicity; (2) ability to deal with problems of disorganized complexity; and (3) ability to deal with problems of organized complexity.

The history of modern thought about cities is unfortunately very different from the history of modern thought about the life sciences. The theorists of conventional modern city planning have consistently mistaken cities as problems of simplicity and of disorganized complexity, and have tried to analyze and treat them thus.

The lesson of the airplane is not primarily in the forms it has created, and above all we must learn to see in an airplane not a bird or a dragon-fly, but a machine for flying; the lesson of the airplane lies in the logic which governed the enunciation of the problem and which led to its successful realization. When a problem is properly stated, in our epoch, it inevitably finds its solution.

The problem of the house has not yet been stated.

Another aspect of design thinking that was evident in the foregoing case studies is the tenacity with which designers will cling to major design ideas and themes in the face of what at times might seem insurmountable odds. Often the concept the designer has in mind can only come to fruition if a large number of apparently countervailing conditions can be surmounted.

Even when severe problems are encountered, a considerable effort is made to make the initial idea work, rather than to stand back and adopt a fresh point of departure.

Aaron: You know that story about how NASA spent millions of dollars developing this pen that writes in Zero G? And how Russia solved the problem?

Abe: Yeah, they used a pencil.

The problems themselves, though they once obsessed you, and kept you working late night after night, and made you talk in your sleep, turn out to have been hollow: two weeks after your last day they already have contracted into inert pellets one-fiftieth of their former size; you find yourself unable to recreate the sense of what was really at stake, for it seems to have been the Hungarian 5/2 rhythm of the lived workweek alone that kept each fascinating crisis inflated to its full interdepartmental complexity.

When you sign the contract for the construction project, you are agreeing to make a Thing—app, website, whatever. And you will have agreed to deliver this Thing on a certain date, also known as a deadline. From this point forward, the goals of shipping the Thing on time and actually solving the client’s problem will be in competition with each other.

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius: You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!’

Where the problem is old, the old solutions will nearly always be best.

A true revelation, it seems to me, will emerge only from stubborn concentration on a solitary problem. I am not in league with inventors or adventurous, nor with travelers to exotic destinations. The surest - also the quickest - way to awake the sense of wonder in ourselves is to look intently, undeterred, at a single object. Suddenly, miraculously, it will reveal itself as something we have never seen before.

Motorola developed what it called a 'technology shelf’, created by a small group of engineers, on which were placed possible technical solutions that other teams might use in the future; rather than trying to solve the problem outright, it developed tools whose immediate value was not clear.

The identification a good craftsman produces is selective, that of finding the most forgiving element in a difficult situation. Often this element is smaller, and so seems less important, than the larger challenge. It is an error in technical as in artistic work to deal first with the big difficulties and then clean up the details; good work often proceeds in just the opposite fashion.

Each pattern is a rule which describes what you have to do to generate the entity which it defines. It is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution.

There is an imperative aspect to the pattern. The pattern solves a problem. It is not merely “a” pattern, which one might or might not use on a hillside. It is a desirable pattern; and for a person who wants to farm a hillside, and prevent it from erosion, he must create this pattern, in order to maintain a stable and healthy world. In this sense, the pattern not only tells him how to create the pattern of terracing, if he wants to; it also tells him that it is essential for him to do so, in certain particular contexts, and that he must create this pattern there.

It is in this sense that the system of patterns forms a language.

The success and spread of a particular tool – and this tool can be organizational or administrative as well as mechanical – has another consequence. Any task tends to be structured by the available tools. It can appear that the available tools represent the best or even the only way to deal with a situation.

Thus is may be wise, when communities are faced with new technological solutions to existing problems, to ask what these techniques may prevent and not only to check what the techniques promise to do.

In System A, there is no architect separate from the contractor. We are builders, simply. As builders, we have a direct feeling about construction. We feel it in our fingers, so it is down to earth. One result of this down-to-earth quality is that everything is somewhat experimental. We make experiments all the time. Sometimes we place a piece of wood this way. Another time, we may like to try it that way. Any time something new comes up in the design of a building, we are very likely to try and invent the best way of building it. This is not a great big invention. Just a simple invention, the way we might invent a way of tying a piece of string, to hold a broken toy together. It is just practical.