Problem Solving
The solution of the age
What the problem is
You can't look a big problem too directly in the eye
Everything works both ways
The kind of problem a city is
The problem of the house has not yet been stated
Clinging to ideas
A good question is better than a brilliant answer
A normal wooden pencil
Each fascinating crisis
You are agreeing to make a Thing
How to be a genius
Old solutions
As something we have never seen before
The technology shelf
Details first
Each pattern is a rule
When all you have is a hammer
Notes on the Synthesis of Form
Framing vs. Shaping
Learning to walk through walls
An Article by David R. MacIverI have a running joke that one of the most useful things I do when coaching or consulting is to say to people “Yes, that does sound like a problem. Have you tried solving it?”
Part of why this is a joke is that actually most of the useful work happens prior to the point - the hard part is actually articulating what is going wrong well enough that it seems like a soluble problem - but there is genuinely something useful about this, because often it feels people are looking for permission.
Without the external prompt, solving their problem is not something they noticed that they were allowed to do.
Delight in the imperfect
An Article by David R. MacIverI think part of the difficulty in allowing ourselves to properly delight in the imperfect, comes from conflating delighting in something with wanting it to happen. This isn’t the case. You can appreciate something as it exists while acknowledging its problems. You can see that a fire is beautiful without becoming a pyromaniac, and you can appreciate the absurdity of your political situation without thinking it’s good.
Even if a delight in the imperfect causes you to want more imperfection in your life (and it should), there is no shortage of imperfection to seek out. The imperfect is not scarce, it’s abundant. If you find imperfection delightful, you will never be short of things that delight you, even if you fix any given problem. Solving problems and smoothing out imperfections doesn’t remove the source of delight, it merely opens up new vistas for it. You could give yourself over totally to delight in the imperfect and never run out of things to explore, even without creating your own.
The Nature of Product
An Article by Marty CaganToo many product managers and product designers want to spend all their time in problem discovery, and not get their hands dirty in solution discovery – the whole nonsense of “product managers are responsible for the what and not the how.”
The Feynman Algorithm
A Definition- Write down the problem.
- Think real hard.
- Write down the solution.
The fastest way to learn something is to do something
An Article by David R. MacIverSuppose you have a problem to solve. What do you do?
Well, you sit down and think real hard, and after extensive and careful planning you try the well thought out and rigorous solution that you have thought up. Right?
No, wrong! Bad.
The correct thing to do when you have a problem is:
- Think for a short amount of time.
- Make sure it is safe to try things.
- Try something you think will work.
- Observe the result. If you succeeded, yay you solved the problem! If it didn't work, think about what that means for the nature of the problem and try again.
Scott and Scurvy
An Essay by Maciej Cegłowski…one of the simplest of diseases managed to utterly confound us for so long, at the cost of millions of lives, even after we had stumbled across an unequivocal cure. It makes you wonder how many incurable ailments of the modern world—depression, autism, hypertension, obesity—will turn out to have equally simple solutions, once we are able to see them in the correct light. What will we be slapping our foreheads about sixty years from now, wondering how we missed something so obvious?
Class 1 / Class 2 Problems
An Article by Kevin KellyThere are two classes of problems caused by new technology. Class 1 problems are due to it not working perfectly. Class 2 problems are due to it working perfectly.
...Class 1 problems arise early and they are easy to imagine. Usually market forces will solve them. You could say, most Class 1 problems are solved along the way as they rush to become Class 2 problems. Class 2 problems are much harder to solve because they require more than just the invisible hand of the market to overcome them.
...Class 1 problems are caused by technology that is not perfect, and are solved by the marketplace. Class 2 problems are caused by technology that is perfect, and must be solved by extra-market forces such as cultural norms, regulation, and social imagination.
Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving
A Research PaperHow would you change this structure so that you could put a masonry brick on top of it without crushing the figurine, bearing in mind that each block added costs 10 cents? If you are like most participants in a study reported by Adams et al. in Nature, you would add pillars to better support the roof. But a simpler (and cheaper) solution would be to remove the existing pillar, and let the roof simply rest on the base.
A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient.
Do not propose solutions
A Quote“Do not propose solutions until the problem has been discussed as thoroughly as possible without suggesting any.
I have often used this edict with groups I have led—particularly when they face a very tough problem, which is when group members are most apt to propose solutions immediately.”
— Norman R.F. Maier
What we have known since long
A Quote by Ludwig WittgensteinThe problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.
Dear Microsoft
We realized a few years ago that the value of switching to Slack was so obvious and the advantages so overwhelming that every business would be using Slack, or “something just like it,” within the decade. It’s validating to see you’ve come around to the same way of thinking. And even though — being honest here — it’s a little scary, we know it will bring a better future forward faster.
However, all this is harder than it looks. So, as you set out to build “something just like it,” we want to give you some friendly advice.
It's not the features that matter
First, and most importantly, it’s not the features that matter. You’re not going to create something people really love by making a big list of Slack’s features and simply checking those boxes. The revolution that has led to millions of people flocking to Slack has been, and continues to be, driven by something much deeper.
Building a product that allows for significant improvements in how people communicate requires a degree of thoughtfulness and craftsmanship that is not common in the development of enterprise software. How far you go in helping companies truly transform to take advantage of this shift in working is even more important than the individual software features you are duplicating.
An open platform is essential
Second, an open platform is essential. Communication is just one part of what humans do on the job. The modern knowledge worker relies on dozens of different products for their daily work, and that number is constantly expanding. These critical business processes and workflows demand the best tools, regardless of vendor.
You've got to do this with love
Third, you’ve got to do this with love. You’ll need to take a radically different approach to supporting and partnering with customers to help them adjust to new and better ways of working.