Piece #10: Problem Solving
It's a fine skill to have
Think differently. Think outside the box. Innovate. Create. Change. Disrupt. Pioneer.
We tend to overuse these phrases without giving them much thought.
What does it mean to think differently? How do we innovate? Can we make something new by thinking creatively? What does it mean to be a disruptor? And why do we need all that?
Well, we might need it to solve problems.
Usually, when we are immersed in tackling a challenging issue, we are trying too hard, we get overwhelmed, too attached, too emotional, highly sensitive, and stuck.
Our brain is a powerful tool and it works in the strangest ways. That's why we usually have our most creative ideas, a-ha! moments, and epiphanies when we walk away from the problem. You know – while having a bath, walking a dog, preparing a meal...
When we step away, give ourselves time, and relax, our brain starts connecting the dots, finding new, unimaginable connections, and soon enough there it is: a perfect solution.
Of course, walking away from the problems isn't the only way to solve them 😁
Is there a universal way to solve problems?
Let's take a look at how a mathematician Claude Shannon approached solving problems, as described in the article from Quartz about a universal way to solve problems from a perspective of this mathematical genius.
Seems like Claude Shannon didn’t just formulate a question and then look for answers. He was methodological in developing a process to help him see beyond what was in sight.
His problem-solving process included:
Finding a problem
Understanding a problem
Going beyond obvious questions
Rooting down to the core of a problem
Defining a shape and a form of a problem
Focusing on essential details, but always keeping a bigger picture in mind
Creative thinking (making less logical connections and getting out of standard mental loops)
Restructuring a problem (maximizing it, minimizing it, contrasting it, inverting it)
Changing a reference point
Reframing a point of view
Discovering good ideas after going through a lot of bad ones first
Uncovering insights
Critical thinking (questioning every answer and every possible solution)
Mr. Shannon definitely developed a methodology that is relevant for every problem-solving situation, not only the math problems.
Now, here's one great example of problem-solving within a realm of digital products.
Have you got a chance to try the new email service Hey.com?
It is an email reimagined. I love it!
It is built by Basecamp, and what did they do here?
Examined the current state of email
Pinpointed all the problems, issues, broken parts
Fixed them by offering new solutions
Some of the HEY email features include:
Privacy above all
Tracking-free emails
Scan of first-time senders
Messages threads
Personal notes on emails
3 core landing places for emails: The Imbox (not a typo, it's where all your important emails go), The Feed (feed-like space for all the newsletters and marketing emails), and The Paper Trail (where all the receipts, invoices, and similar docs go)
It has a clear and sleek design, useful and delightful copy, and the smooth onboarding flow, including training cards for the first 15 emails you'll receive and little notes all around to make the adoption easier.
Did I say I love it? 😎
I applied for early access back in February, and my invite came in last week. And it came with a gift. My special invitation code can be used by me (I already used it) and by two other people.
So, if you'd like to jump in and explore HEY email, feel free to use my code. After it's been used two more times (for two different accounts) it won't work anymore.
The invitation code is: 5y7neou
To sign up, visit Hey.com, click the "Try it free" button, then click the "Have an invite code?" button. Enter invite code on the next screen and you’re in. Enjoy 😊 And let me know your thoughts, I'd love to hear them.
We solve problems every day
Do you consider yourself a creative problem-solver? Well, you should. Because that's what we do. We, the content people. We solve problems by using words as our tools, variables, elements.
What kind of problems do we solve? The problems that our audience have, problems that our users face, problems that our customers encounter on their journey, problems that our clients wouldn't be able to solve on their own.
For instance, as a freelance writer, I offer services that help my clients deal with some of these:
Not being sure who their audience is and how to address the issues of the audience's interest
Not having employees skilled enough in content writing
Dealing with an unstructured, all-over-the-place content production workflow
Being clueless about the editorial management (and writing) for their blog
Not being sure how they differentiate from their competitors
Not having clear goals set for every piece of the content
Stressing over brand messaging, style guides, voice and tone
As an editorial strategist for a blog, you might wanna tackle some of these questions to come up with relevant, educational, engaging content:
What questions does your audience have regarding your industry, niche, topic?
How much do they already know?
What's new?
Where do your users/customers look for answers?
How do they search for answers?
Do they actually find the answers?
How can you help?
Are there new challenging issues arising on the horizon?
How does your product or service fit in their everyday life/work?
How can you answer those burning questions through your articles?
Should you include data visualization as well – diagrams, tables, infographics?
Can some of these questions be answered via a video tutorial, a webinar series, a masterclass?
As a startup founder, you might face these issues:
Is your business idea valid?
Who is it for?
Will they buy it?
How can you test and validate a product?
Where to start research and with whom?
Should you try a new feature?
How to be original?
Can you make something that the world has never seen before?
Now, here is the big question:
How do you know which problems to solve?
If you have an existing product or a business, you can find the answer by looking into the research reports, customer support logs, chat questions, or you can go out and talk to your people directly and listen, observe, analyze.
The real problems, issues, and challenges will inevitably reveal themselves.
What would the CIA say to this?
If you are not sure how to tackle the problems and challenges before you, take a look at The Phoenix Checklist, as seen in the Strategy and Planning Scrapbook by Alex Morris. This checklist is developed by the CIA to “encourage agents to look at a challenge from many different angles.”
Questions of The Phoenix Checklist are:
Why is it necessary to solve the problem?
What benefits will you receive by solving the problem?
What is the unknown?
What is it you don't yet understand?
What is the information you have?
What isn't a problem?
Is the information sufficient? Or is it insufficient? Or redundant? Or contradictory?
Should you draw a diagram of the problem? A figure?
Where are the boundaries of the problem?
Can you separate the various parts of the problem? What are the constants of the problem?
Have you seen this problem before?
Have you seen this problem in a slightly different form? Do you know a related problem?
Try to think of a familiar problem having the same or a similar unknown
Suppose you find a problem related to yours that has already been solved. Can you use its method?
Can you restate your problem? How many different ways can you restate it? Can the rules be changed?
What are the best, worst, and most probable cases you can imagine?
Not bad, CIA, not bad at all.
And how about design thinking for writers?
In the article about using design thinking principles in UX/UI design that I wrote two years ago for the agency blog, this was my opening line:
Design thinking is a set of principles for a hands-on approach to problem-solving using a human-centered design within a design-centric culture anywhere where the emotional, cognitive, and aesthetic needs of users tend to be fulfilled.
Do I hear you say “Whaaat? What's this buzzword buzz?”
Yeah, well, long story short, as Bill Burnett, an assistant professor at Stanford University, would say:
Design thinking is a method, not magic.
Now, let's see what the people from IDEO, who are known as best practitioners of design thinking, have to say.
Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategies. This approach brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people who aren't trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges.
Yes, that also includes us – writers.
Well-known iterative phases of a design thinking process, thoroughly described in this article from Interaction Design Foundation, are:
Empathize
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
We can also add the sixth phase – Implement – to execute upon the final solutions and implement them in our products, projects, businesses. This sixth phase is something that a UX designer and content strategist Kaila Lee talked about in her recent UX Writer Conference talk on using a design framework for writing strings.
We can use each of these phases for content writing, copywriting, UX writing, technical writing, you name it.
We can empathize with users or customers through the research, define the problem through finding audience needs, pain points, challenges, questions, and difficulties people face, ideate solutions through collaborative brainstorming sessions and reflection on possible content outcomes, prototype together with designers and engineers through sketching, wireframes, prototypes, and beta versions, test our copy through usability testing, analytics, feedback, reviews, and revisions, and implement our best solutions into the interfaces.
As experts from IDEO would say:
When done right, design thinking will help you understand the mindsets and needs of the people you're creating for, surface opportunities based on these needs, and lead you to innovative new solutions starting with quick, low-fidelity experiments that provide learning and gradually increase in fidelity.
That’s what we always want to do, right? To understand our audience and craft creative, original, innovative content based on their needs. Problem solved 😊
Read on
Four basic steps in solving a problem, according to this article from MindTools, are defining the problem, generating ideas, evaluating and selecting alternatives, implementing solutions. Learn more about it and find just the right tools for finding better solutions.
If you wonder whether critical thinking skills are important for solving problems, know that a critical thinker will identify, analyze, and solve problems systematically rather than by intuition or instinct. Someone with critical thinking skills can also understand the links between ideas, determine the importance of ideas, recognize and build arguments, identify inconsistencies and errors, reflect on their own assumptions, beliefs and values, and so much more.
To innovate in teams, you can try the TRIZ, a toolkit, a set of principles, and a problem-solving technique originally structured by Genrich Altshuller, a patent examiner for the Russian Navy. Altshuller categorized inventive principles in several retrievable forms, including a Contradiction Table, 40 Inventive Principles, and 76 Standard Solutions. As a brainstorming tool, TRIZ has been growing in popularity, especially among product development teams.
Watch & Learn
Here is an excellent interview with Tom Kelley, a Partner at IDEO, and an author of Creative Confidence, The Art of Innovation, and The Ten Faces of Innovation. It's the episode of the High Resolution video series with hosts Bobby Ghoshal and Jared Erondu. In this interview, Tom Kelley explains the true definition of innovation, what it takes to build your creative confidence, how to practice design thinking, and so much more interesting and useful stuff.
If you want to know about a simple exercise that can help you understand and solve complex problems, watch Tom Wujec in his TEDx talk Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast. Hint: it's all about visualization of problems with simple drawings, sticky notes, and working in groups to break a challenge down to smaller parts.
Enroll in the Coursera course Creative Thinking: Techniques and Tools for Success, offered by Imperial College London, and learn how to communicate new ideas innovatively and engagingly, how to approach problems from fresh angles, and how to produce novel solutions.
To conclude, here is an interesting thought coming from Tom Kelley of IDEO.
Opportunities are usually hidden in plain sight. We just don't see them because we have our biases, pre-set agendas, we've been there before, we know what to expect… What we need to do is to look at every problem with a fresh pair of eyes, with a beginner's mindset, or from a child's perspective.
Changing a perspective, having a fresh new approach, and flipping the problem over surely is a heck of a way to come up with creative ideas and innovative solutions.
Happy problem solving y'all,
Nadja