KALEY FITZ STUDIO BLOGS

The Problem needing a solution must be identified and stated with clarity. A problem not clearly identified as mis-stated can lead to aimless and disorganized effort which misses the point of the matter at hand. It is a common observation that a problem fully and clearly identified and stated is, as often as not, half-solved. Information bearing on the problem and its potential solutions needs to be marshalled and made available in a clear and accessible way. The thinker, concerned with a particular problem, needs to have as much relevant information in memory as possible and, when the limits of memory are reached, overflow information at hand for consultation as needed. This aspect of problem solving is most often called research.

 

The step usually called creative can now be undertaken. Insofar as we understand the thought processes involved, they seem to consist of simultaneously holding the problem in mind while calling up from memory, the specific information assembled through research and the more general information acquired through the experience, education and whatever other sources have stocked the memory with varied data. This information seems to be held in layers of memory that range downward from the recently acquired and easily accessible to the deep levels, usually called unconscious. The familiar effort of trying to think appears to be a deliberate churning of the resources of stored information held in the memory. As information comes to consciousness, it is matched against the perceived problem in an effort to find concepts, action proposals or forms related in some useful way to the problem at hand. When some piece of remembered information seems to connect with an aspect of the problem, we recognize a possible ‘fit’ in much the way the worker of a jigsaw puzzle recognizes the shape of a piece as a possibility for a specific place in the incomplete puzzle. In this way the potential solution, or part of a problem solution, surfaces and can be noted or stated as a proposal.

 

Each proposal for a problem solution (usually only a fragment of the complete solution), once stated, is ready for testing in some concrete way – in words, drawings, models or prototypes that can then be evaluated in one way or another. At a simple level, the familiar sketch of an idea on a pad is such a test. It makes the proposed solution or part of a solution accessible to the imaginary testing that takes place as it is viewed and considered as it would work out if realized. Models and mock-ups permit more realistic testing. The type of models in wind tunnels and test tanks, or of laboratory prototypes, are more literal tests of proposed problem solutions. Many such tests are necessary to lead thinking toward gradually better proposals. Each test leads to the next step which is evaluation—aimed at sorting out what aspects of the proposal are successful and what aspects are not. This will usually make it possible to repeat steps 3 and 4 with a greater degree of success. This process with recycled proposal and evaluation can lead to gradually improving success, until a point is reached where level of success is sufficiently good to suggest that further effort will not generate enough improvement worthwhile. The law of diminishing returns suggests that as an ideally perfect solution is approached, more and more effort offers less and less improvement. At some point it is appropriate to proceed to implementation (deployment) of the designed problem solution. When it is realized and put into use, certain shortcomings will usually be discovered that confirm the theoretical tests of step 4. As time passes, the original problem statement may become obsolete and new information will become available – until, after passage of some time, the entire process can be undertaken afresh from the beginning. We say ‘the problem has changed’ and therefore the old solutions have become inadequate.