Training Your Professor for Fun & Profit

04 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

Tags

problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving

The name of B. F. Skinner is not often invoked in discussions of User Experience. There are limitations to his basic theory, but perhaps it is time to revisit the baby that was, by many, thrown out with that bathwater. Skinner’s approach has two major limitations that come to mind. First, human behavior is moderated by internal structures such as beliefs, framings, assumptions, labels, and so on. If one ignores these cognitive structures and tries to predict human behavior solely on the basis what behavior is “reinforced” those prediction efforts will often fail.

Second, humans (and other animals) are not born as “blank slates.” We have a number of inborn predispositions. For example, if you “punish” a rat by shocking the rat after performing a particular action, it will quickly learn to avoid that action. Similarly, if you feed the rat a food with a distinctive taste and that food will make it nauseous, it will quickly learn to avoid that taste. Some readers may have also experienced this. If your first experience with oysters, say, made you vomit, you may never try them for the rest of your life.

On the other hand, if you shock the rat after it tastes something, that is a much harder association to master. Or, if you make the rat nauseous after pressing a level, that is also a difficult association to learn.

Despite these and other limitations of the strictly Skinnerian approach, reinforcement still works in many situations. It is even possible for people to “learn” a behavior because of reinforcement and to learn without any conscious awareness of the fact that they are being trained in this way.

As an undergraduate at Case-Western Reserve, one of my psychology courses (on learning) was taught by a “Skinnerian.” He was an excellent instructor and I enjoyed the course immensely. Since we had a syllabus, I knew exactly when he would be lecturing on the topic of “unconscious conditioning.” As usual, almost the entire class was seated before the Professor arrived. This gave me time to explain to my classmates my idea for what the class would do: condition him to stand in a corner and comb his hair with his hand.

I think you will appreciate the fun here. He was giving a lecture about how people could be conditioned without awareness and while he was doing that, we were going to condition him without his awareness.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I will return momentarily to explain just how we managed, but first, I must explain the concept of “shaping.” Shaping is an extremely important concept for training your pets or your kids to behave in convenient or useful ways. Basically, the idea is to begin by reinforcing any behavior that is in the direction that you want the behavior to go in. If you want to potty train your child, for instance, you don’t initially wait for complete success. You praise the child even if he or she sits on the potty. You praise the child if they try to make it to the bathroom but have an “accident” on the way. Gradually, your criteria become stricter and you only reinforce behavior closer and closer to the goal. Similarly, if you want to train your dog to “shake hands” you initially praise them for anything even close. For instance, if you put your hand out and they lift their paw even slightly off the ground, you praise them. As they become more adept, you change your criteria for reward. Eventually, you only reinforce them then when they are “shaking hands” as well as you think possible.

Now, let’s return to the Skinnerian Professor and his lecture on unconscious conditioning. If the class had waited until he stood in the corner and combed his hair with his hand, we never would have succeeded. At first, we only reinforced him (by looking up and looking very eager and interested) when he stood to the right of his lectern (from our perspective). Then, we only began to reinforce him when he was near the corner. Then, we only began to reinforce him when he raised his hand slightly. Then, we only acted eager and interested when his hand went up toward his head or face. Finally, we only acted eager and interested when he stood in the corner and combed his hair with his hand. It took almost the entire hour for this to work. I kept a written record of his behavior and noted the times and the changes in our criteria for success. When the lecture was over, I walked up and explained what we had done. I showed him my records.

He was astounded! It was awesome. I suppose theoretically, he could have been putting it on, but if he was, it was the best acting performance I saw in all my years attending Eldred Theater or the Cleveland Playhouse. Once he recovered from his initial shock though, to his credit, he didn’t get angry with me or deny the reality of what had actually happened. He just nodded and said (essentially). “Yeah. This stuff really works.”

Yeah. It really does. And, although B. F. Skinner’s approach to human behavior is overly simplistic, it still does work in many circumstances, including a human’s behavior interacting with a computer system.

Another important contribution of B. F. Skinner is his work on “schedules of reinforcement.” It’s worth understanding this in some detail, but for now, I just want to focus on one aspect. The “schedule of reinforcement” that leads to the highest rates of behavior is to reinforce, not every time a desired behavior is observed, but very seldom and randomly.

Las Vegas comes to mind. I only visited once. For a time, I watched people at the slot machines. Unlike the people who win on TV commercial casinos, in the “real world” (to the extent Las Vegas is part of the “real world”), I saw four people win and not a single one of them showed even a glimmer of pleasure. They simply started feeding their winnings back into the machine. This is how the Casinos make their money. Basically, they are using “a thin Variable Ratio Schedule” to get people hooked on behavior that is statistically guaranteed not to be in their financial interest. (Of course, it’s understood, people also gamble for fun. That’s okay.) But if you are gambling against the Casinos in order to make money. Well….good luck. Remember: they have chauffeurs, yachts, and mansions. You do the math. They say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But they might instead say, “Money that comes to Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

In most User Experience contexts, we want the relationship between what the user does and the consequences to be consistent. I say “most” because, when it comes to games or learning experiences or computer art, this is not always true. In most work-related applications however, we want the user to be reinforced every time he or she takes appropriate action. I think that’s what designers mainly strive for.

I believe, however, that the users themselves sometimes fall into doing something that only occasionally pays off. For example, let’s say a college student has ground floor dorm room and connects to the internet via satellite. The connection is flakey. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it works much better on the top floor. So, when he or she tries to access the Internet and fails, they walk the three flights of stairs and they successfully connect every single time. But walking three flights of stairs is a pain so the student in question decides it might help if they close all their windows before trying to connect. Now, say that didn’t work so they decided to close all the windows and then reboot. Well! What do you know!? It worked. So, the next time they have trouble connecting, instead of walking up three flights of stairs, the student closes all the windows and reboots the machine. Maybe, by sheer chance, it worked again!

Photo by Guduru Ajay bhargav on Pexels.com

The next time, perhaps it doesn’t work. But three flights of stairs? That’s a long ways. So, they try again! It works!

But winter is coming.

And with winter comes rain. And with rain comes worse connectivity to the satellite. So, as the rain goes from San Diego rain frequency to San Francisco rain to Portland rain to Seattle rain frequency, our student becomes less and less successful in actually connecting. But every so often, the procedure works. They may have rebooted their machine ten times before it finally connected, but that just makes it more likely they will be willing to try twenty times before giving up. Furthermore, the student may have “given up” on even considering walking up 3 flights of stairs. Having the persistent habit of rebooting the machine multiple times actually prevents the student from either doing the thing that has always worked or working toward a more permanent solution (e.g., changing rooms, getting an antennae, finding a wired hookup, etc.).

It is possible in this way to train a rat or a pigeon or a college student — or even a professor — to do something they would not have consciously chosen to do — or to do something at a much greater frequency than they would have chosen to do it.

Next (Perhaps): “The Skinner Box and the Box Next Door.”

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Author page on Amazon

https://petersironwood.com/2018/07/12/chain-saws-make-the-best-hair-trimmers/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/02/28/essays-on-america-addictions/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/05/08/what-about-the-butter-dish/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/06/02/essays-on-america-my-cousin-bobby/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/31/essays-on-america-the-update-problem/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/08/21/the-primacy-effect-the-destroyers-advantage/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/17/bounce/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/25/process-re-engineering-moves-to-baseball/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/03/living-on-the-edge/

https://petersironwood.com/2017/01/09/trumpism-is-a-new-religion/

https://petersironwood.com/2019/07/18/essays-on-america-wednesday/

A Long Day’s Journey into Hangover

03 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alcohol, drama, problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, thinking

Closely aligned with the notion of “Problem Framing” is the notion of “Attribution.”

My dad was an electrical engineer. My mother was an English and Drama teacher. I’ve always enjoyed acting though I never pursued it as a career. My mother’s mother founded the “Akron Dramatic Club” and held meetings for many years at the house where my mom grew up. Typically, the group would read plays. I happened to have a very good memory at a young age and often I would “fill in” for anyone who was missing, even before I could read.

In high school, I had the lead in our Senior Class Play, One Foot in Heaven. In college, I continued to take acting classes as well as technical subjects. In one “Studio Production,” we presented a scene from Eugene O’Neil’s drama, Long Day’s Journey into Night. I played the part of Jamie, based on Eugene O’Neil’s older brother. In the particular scene in question, the father and his two sons sit around a table drinking Irish Whiskey and, as they get drunker, blaming themselves and each other for various things including their mother’s drug addiction.

In preparation, we rehearsed on a dozen occasions. At the time, my friends and I typically went out to bars several times a week and drank “3.2 beer.” In Ohio, at that time, the only alcoholic beverage one could legally drink from age 18 to 21 was beer with no more than 3.2% alcohol. I had gotten a “buzz” a few times, but had never been drunk.

I had, however, seen people drunk in real life a few times and seen them many times on TV and in movies. I pretty much knew how to “act drunk.” So, each time we rehearsed the scene, as I drank more and more tea, I pretended to get drunker and drunker. Some say, “in vino veritas.” I don’t totally agree, but it is true that people will say nastier things to each other sometimes under the influence. Jamie, in O’Neil’s play blamed his mother’s addiction on Eugene having been born and, given enough Irish Whiskey, he told him so in no uncertain terms.

In our last dress rehearsal, for some reason, our director thought it would be a great idea if we ran through the scene three times using actual Irish Whiskey instead of weak tea. So, we did. As best I can recall, I had about a third of a bottle of wine before we began the rehearsal and each time through, I had a beer mug half filled with water and half with Irish Whiskey. It tasted pretty horrible, but I could down it. I simulated drunkenness pretty well, if I do say so myself. Each time I went through the scene, I would begin by acting “sober” and then gradually become drunker and drunker. Then, we would do the scene again. I still had a good memory, so I didn’t flub my lines. I don’t think the rest of the cast messed up either. Everything was fine.

Until the rehearsal was over.

During the rehearsal, I was repeating words and gestures that I had done many times. And in every rehearsal before this one, I had acted as though I was drunk even though I had been perfectly sober. Now that rehearsal was over and I found myself faced with the task of getting off the stage, remembering where my dorm was, and navigating myself home, I realized that I was not acting drunk. I was drunk. Very drunk. Walking was a problem.

While I had been rehearsing, I had attributed my behavior, the numb, fuzzy way I felt, and my slurred speech to my superb acting.

Attribution can be tricky.

If feedback is delayed, trying to do the “right thing” can be completely counterproductive. You may attribute good outcomes to actions that are actually making things worse!!

(Here’s a post on how that might apply to controlling a pandemic). https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/29/essays-on-america-oops/

Dave Pelz has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT and is a former astronaut. More recently, he has become an expert in the “short game” part of golf. He applies his analytic and scientific skills to the game and has inventions to help the golfer make correct attributions; a foundation for improving skill.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you line up to hit a putt (a short golf stroke) from a spot about ten feet from the hole. You strike the ball and it veers to a position about six inches left of the hole. It’s easy for you to see that you’ve ended up six inches left, but you probably have no idea why. Dave Pelz could tell you that you might have misread the slope; you might have misread the grain; you might have pulled the club a little left; you might have hit the ball slightly off center of the putter head causing it to twist ever so slightly and take energy away from the putt; you might, indeed, have done absolutely nothing wrong at all. Your ball might have hit a teeny unseen pebble or been blown off course by a puff of wind. Your golf ball might even possibly be a little off balance.

Dave Pelz has invented various devices to help you disambiguate these (and other) potential sources of error. For example, if your ball ended up 6 inches left because you hit the golf ball slightly off the center of your putter, this would be extremely hard to notice. Dave Pelz has a device however, that you can put on your putter blade. It has “prongs” on both sides of the center line. If you hit the middle of the back of a golf ball with the exact center of your putter blade, the golf ball will go straight ahead as it normally would. However, if you’re off center ever so slightly, the ball will careen off at a strange angle. You’ll know immediately that you haven’t hit the center of the putter blade.

I’ve played many rounds of golf. I’ve never observed someone miss a putt and then say, “Oh, shoot! I hit the back of the ball, not with the exact center of my putter blade, but with a spot an eighth of an inch away from the center point. Damn!”

In complex situations, it can be very tricky to discover attributions. And if you make the wrong attributions, you will almost certainly mis-frame the problem to be solved.

Framings exist at different levels. You might seek to improve your putting by discovering mistakes you make while putting and then correcting them. It helps if you have good feedback, whether from a coach or from mechanical devices or from your own nervous system.

At a higher level, you might also need to reframe your expectations. You see, missing a ten foot putt by six inches is actually a pretty good result! Pro Tour Golfers make less than half of their ten foot putts. What you see on TV coverage of Pro Tour putts is mostly of pros making 10, 20, or 30 foot putts. But that is not, on average, what happens.

Similarly, society is inundated with stories and images of people seeming to overcome impossible odds to become insanely successful. And quickly. At least, in the movies, it happens quickly, because otherwise, we would lose patience and not keep watching. Only, in real life, it doesn’t happen quickly. If you frame your “life problem” as: “How do I become a millionaire by age 25?” you may be setting yourself up for failure.

A different framing might be: “What can I do that I love that also contributes to society so much that society will provide me the things I need.”

Of course, some people may be born rich. In such cases, it is very easy to fall into the misapprehension that all your success is due to your hard work, judgement, intelligence, etc. when, basically, it’s mainly luck of the draw.

Consider. However brilliant you might be, or physically gifted, how do you think your life would look right now if you had been born 100,000 years ago? You wouldn’t be reading these words on a computer, clearly. You wouldn’t be reading at all. Your surroundings, your clothing, your diet, your tools — these are much more determined by the circumstances you were born into than you likely imagine.

It’s not crazy to focus on your own decisions. After all, no-one can determine the circumstances of their birth. You can change your decisions though. Usually, therefore, it makes sense to focus on your decisions, not on the circumstances of your birth.

Usually.

But not if you use the sheer luck of your birth circumstances to argue that you should have more than your fair share. Making your success out to be the results only of your personal perspiration and perspicacity is petty.

Consider the gratitude you owe for what was granted. Your generosity grows correspondingly.

It’s a good antidote for a hangover. You might even call it an antedote.

Attributions are often made without your awareness. They can easily lead you astray. They can even lead you to becoming drunk without knowing it. You might be drunk on whiskey, as I was on that Long Day’s Journey, but people may also become drunk on power, money, or status.

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An essay on mindfulness and gratitude: Corn on the Cob

https://petersironwood.com/2020/04/05/imagine-all-the-people/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/13/who-are-the-speakers-for-the-dead/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/08/17/roar-ocean-roar/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/12/14/how-the-nightingale-learned-to-sing/

https://petersironwood.com/2020/02/29/the-lost-sapphire/

Tales from an American Childhood

Turing’s Nightmares

Author Page on Amazon

The Slow-Seeming Snapping Turtle

01 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

affordance, deception, Primacy Effect, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, psychology, thinking

The Slow-Seeming Snapping Turtle

(Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover Story)

One fine summer day, driving down the long curved driveway of IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York, I noticed a manhole-sized snapping turtle in the middle of the driveway. I pulled the car over. I didn’t want someone running into the reptile, looking as he did, such a splendid living fossil.

Naturally, I knew snapping turtles could be dangerous, though as I watched him plod ever so slowly down the road, I felt no threat. Surely, my mammalian reflexes were far superior to those of this ancient reptilian beast. But, in a seeming excess of caution, I made no attempt to touch him with my bare hands. Instead, I found a thigh-sized dead tree branch that seemed suitable for pushing him off the road and thus to safety.

I pushed hard on one side of his carapace. At first, he just kept plodding ahead, but my superior strength overcame his squat stubborn frame and he gradually angled toward the berm. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. In a split second, the viscous snapped to vicious. His head shot out a good foot from his shell and whipped around to the side, still managing his neck-lengthening trick. He chomped down and completely through the tree limb before I even had a chance to be startled.

Our first impression of a situation can often lead us to dangerously erroneous actions.

Here’s another example.

As most Americans now know, there are 435 people in the House of Representatives. What is the probability that at least two in the House of Representatives share a birthday?

This is actually an exceedingly easy problem to solve.

Unless…

Unless, you are familiar with a similar-looking problem called “The Birthday Problem” which may be stated something like this:

You are starting a new class of thirty people. What are chances that at least two of them share a birthday?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

It turns out that at least two people will share a birthday in a room with 30 random people over 70% of the time. The “break-even” point where the chances that at least will share a birthday is 23 people. It’s a bit counter-intuitive. But the math is sound.

So, if you have heard of “The Birthday Problem” before, and now hear the question about The House of Representatives, you’d be likely to think something like this: Oh, that’s the birthday problem and it turns out you don’t need many people for their to be a likely double birthday. So, with 435, it must be very hight. Perhaps 99% or even 99.9%

With 435 people in The House of Representatives, you don’t need to “calculate” any probabilities at all. You cannot arrange any way for more than 365 people to “fit into” 365 days without starting to overlap.

Beware of approaching problems (or snapping turtles) based on their eternal appearance. It might or might not be a good clue to its actual behavior.

In the Pattern Language for Collaboration, one is based on this idea and I call it “Context-Setting Entrance.” Because we are prone to pay attention to the entrance, then if we design one, we should ensure that the entrance sets appropriate expectations.

One type of “entrance” to thinking about something is the label. Labels in language can, however, be quite misleading. A dogfish is not a dog. A starfish is not a fish. On the other hand, it’s probably called a “Snapping Turtle” for a good reason. It snaps! It’s not called a “Plodding Turtle.”

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Author Page on Amazon

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on the mental game for all sports.
http://tinyurl.com/ng2heq3

Turing’s Nightmares explores the possible futures of how people communicate with computers and each others. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits describes many ways to work more exercise into daily activities. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

Beware of Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing

Measure for Measure

28 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

context, decision making, framing, HCI, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, thinking, UX

(More or Less is only More or Less, More or Less)

Confusing. I know. Let’s unpack.

We like to measure things. And, generally, that can be a very good thing. Once we measure and quantify, we can bring to bear the world’s most incredible toolbox of mathematical, engineering, and scientific methods. However…

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

It often happens that we can’t really measure what we’d like to measure so instead we measure something that we can measure which we imagine to be a close cousin to what we’d really like to measure. That’s still not a bad thing. But it’s risky. And it becomes a lot more risky if we forget that we are measuring a close cousin at best. Sometimes, it’s actually a distant cousin.

Here’s an example. Suppose a company is interested in the efficient handling of customer service calls (who isn’t?). A typical measure is the average time per call. So, a company might be tempted to reward their Customer Service employees based on having a short average time per call. The result would be that the customer would get back to whatever they were doing more quickly. AND — they wouldn’t have to be on hold in the service queue so long because each call would be handled, on average, more quickly. Good for the customer. The customer service reps would be saving money for the company by answering questions quickly. Some of the money saved will (hopefully) mean raises for the customer service reps. It’s a win/win/win!

Or is it?

Imagine this not unlikely scenario:

The managers of the CSR’s (customer service reps) say that there’s a big push from higher management to make calls go more quickly. They may hint that if the average service time goes down enough, everyone will get a raise. Or, they might set much more specific targets to shoot for.

In either case, the CSR’s are motivated to handle calls more quickly. But how? One way might be for them to learn a whole lot more. They might exchange stories among themselves and perhaps they will participate in designing a system to help them find relevant information more quickly. It might really turn out to be a win/win/win.

On the other hand, one can also imagine that the CSR’s instead simply get rid of “pesky” users as quickly as possible.

“Reboot and call back if that doesn’t work.”

“Sounds like an Internet issue. Check your router.”

“That’s an uncovered item.”

“What’s your account number? Don’t have it? Find it & call back.”

With answers like this, the average time to handle a call will certainly go down!

But it won’t result in a win/win/win!

Users will have to call back 2, 3, 4 or even more times to get their issues adequately resolved. This will glut the hold queues more than if they had had their question answered properly in the first place. Endlessly alternating between raspy music and a message re-assuring the customer that their call is important to company XYZ, will not endear XYZ’s customers to XYZ.

Ultimately, the CSR’s themselves will likely suffer a drop in morale if they begin to view their “job” to get off the phone as quickly as possible rather than to be as helpful as possible. Likely too, sales will begin to decline. As word gets around that the XYZ company has lousy customer service and comparative reviews amplify this effect, sales will decline even more precipitously.

There are two approaches executives often take in such a situation.

Some executives (such as Mister Empathy) may be led to believe that quantification should be less emphasized and the important thing is to set the right tone for the CSR’s; to have them really care about their customers. Often, the approach is combined with better training. This can be a good approach.

Some executives (such as Mister Measure) may be led to believe that they need to do more quantification. In addition to average work time, measures will look at the percentage of users whose problem is solved the first time. Ratings of how effective the CSR was will be taken. Some users might even be called for in-depth interviews about their experience. This can also be a good approach.

There is no law against doing both, or trying each approach at different times or different places in order to learn which works better.

There is a third approach however, which never has good results. That is the approach of Mister Misdirect.

Mister Misdirect’s approach is to deny that there is an issue. Mister Misdirect doesn’t improve training. Mister Misdirect doesn’t put people in a better frame of mind. Mister Misdirect does not add additional measures. Mister Misdirect simply demands that CSR’s continue to drive down the average call time of individual calls and that sales go up! In extreme cases, Mister Misdirect may even fudge the numbers and make it appear that things are much better than they really are. Oh, yes. I have seen this with my own eyes.

Unfortunately, this way of handling things often makes Mister Misdirect an addict. Once an executive starts down the path of making things worse and denying that they did so, they are easily ensnared in a trap. Initially, they only had to take responsibility for instituting, say an incomplete measure and failed to anticipate the possible consequences. But now, having lied about it, they would have to not only admit that they caused a problem, but also that they lied about it.

The next day, when executive wakes up, they have a choice:

1. Own up

2. Continue to deny

If they own up, the consequences will be immediately painful.
If they continue to deny, they will immediately feel relieved. Of course, if they have surrounded themselves with lackeys, they will feel more than simply relieved; they will feel vindicated or even proud. It’s not a “real pride” of course. But it’s some distant relative, I suppose.

For a developer, UX person — or really any worker in an organization, the lesson from this is to anticipate such situations before they happen. If they happen anyway, try to call attention to the situation as quickly as possible. Yes, it may mean you lose favor with the boss. If that is so, then, you really might want to think about getting a new boss. Mister Misdirect will always ultimately fail and when he does, he will drag down a work team, a group, a division, or even an entire company. Mister Misdirect has one and only one framework for solving problems:

Try whatever pops into consciousness.

If it works, take the credit.

If it fails, blame an underling.

But the real fun begins when he takes credit for something and then it turns out it was really a failure. Then, there is only one choice for Mister Misdirect and that is to claim that the false victory was real. From there on, it is Lose/Lose/Lose.

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Author Page on Amazon

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Relevant essays, poems, & fiction about the importance of speaking truth to power:

Pattern Language: “Reality Check”

The Truth Train

The Pandemic Anti-Academic

How The Nightingale Learned to Sing

Process Re-Engineering Comes to Baseball

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Posts on Problem Framing:

How to Frame Your Own Hamster Wheel

Wordless Perfection

Problem Formulation: Who Knows What?

I Went in Seeking Clarity

I Say Hello

Problem Framing: Good Point

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

The Doorbell’s Ringing! Can you Get it?

How to Frame Your Own Hamster Wheel

22 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

decision making, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving

Graduate school at the University of Michigan (in Ann Arbor, Michigan) provided me with a rich, rewarding experience. I was in a program aimed at understanding more about how human beings perceive, decide, learn, and solve problems. I loved it! I still love thinking about those issues. Part of my joy sprang from interacting with my classmates and sharing experiences with them. I thought I would pass along one of the experiences that a classmate told me about. It might prove valuable to you as well.

My classmate ran an experiment and one of his subjects ran out of the room screaming that they couldn’t take it any more. My classmate was horrified that he had caused such stress and completely mystified that he had done so. He felt terrible. He calmed the subject down and eventually discovered what had happened.

In many psychology experiments, one of the things we look at is how long it takes for a person to make a decision. The longer it takes to make a decision, roughly speaking, the more difficult the task and the more thought that it takes to reach a decision. If you were a subject in a psych experiment circa 1970, you might well be part of an experiment to study the “Sternberg Search Task” named after Saul Sternberg (link below). The point is to understand more about people’s “working memory.” This is a facility that comes into play nearly constantly for us in daily life.

For example, your dinner server knows that they are out of four of the items on the menu right now. Rather than tell you all that up-front, they take orders and many times, no-one asks for the items they’re out of. But every time people order she has to compare what people order to this list in her head and let them know. Either that or they will go back to the kitchen and put in an order that can’t be fulfilled. They would then have to go back and tell them. Time is money in the restaurant business and particularly so for the server, who often relies on tips.

Here’s how it would be for you to be a subject in one of these tasks. You’d be presented for a few seconds with a set of letters such as: {A J D H C Z}. The letters would disappear and then, a few seconds later, a single letter would appear; e.g., “Q” and you would press the left lever as quickly as you could if the letter was not in the list and press the right lever if it had been in the list. After a few seconds, you’d be presented with another set such as {X I U W B M} for a few seconds and then, a single letter would appear and you’d be once again asked to decide whether the letter “W” for instance, had been in the list.

Ah, but how many variations on that general theme can you create? Does it matter how large the set is? (yes) How much? (a lot) Do people of different ages do differently on this? (they do) How much does it degrade your performance to be doing something else? (depends what it is). So, that was the game for us.

Usually, if you were a “subject” in such an experiment, you would do this task for 30-60 minutes. It would be tedious and a little mentally taxing, but not so mind-wrenching as trying to learn an insane foreign language such as English (for non-native speakers). (Actually, it’s pretty damned hard even for native speakers, but we don’t like to let on). Nor, would it be like trigonometry is to some; nor trying to “analyze” a poem is for others; nor like trying to sing a tune on key is for some of us. I have been a subject many times in such experiments and this one is not over-taxing. It’s perhaps the level of “stress” that solving a moderate crossword puzzle would generate.

So, I could understand my classmate’s shock. Wouldn’t you be if you handed someone a cross-word puzzle and a few moments later, they ran screaming from the room?

Here’s what happened. Usually, these studies are experimenter-paced. That means, that whatever happens is controlled by a preset schedule. In this study, for instance, a new set of letters might appear every 20 seconds. You would look at the set of letters and it would disappear after 5 seconds. Perhaps you’d look at a blank screen for 5 seconds and then the single letter would appear. You’d have up to five seconds to make your decision and get ready for the next set of letters to appear.

My classmate, however, decided to be “nicer” so he made the experiment self-paced. The subjects could take as long as they liked to start the next trial. When they were ready, they could press both levers at once and the next set would appear. That certainly doesn’t sound stressful.

How did the subject interpret this situation? They thought that they had to press both levers before the next set appeared. And, from their perspective, every time, they reacted just a little faster. But it didn’t help! They tried to go faster and faster, but no matter how fast they went, the next set appeared immediately after they pressed the levers. Although the “subject” was actually in complete control, they perceived it as though they had zero control.

The way you frame a situation may be quite different from the way others frame the situation. It’s no wonder that people may try to solve a problem differently based on their own experience and interests. It’s even more fundamental when people are not even trying to solve the same problem. A problem framed as differently as the Experimenter and the Subject framed the situation in the above scenario is really a completely different problem. In this case, the problem that the experimenter had set for the subject was an easy one: “Decide when you feel like doing another one of these little puzzles and I shall give you one.”

Meanwhile, the problem that the subject was trying to solve was this: “How do I keep speeding up so that I can always press the two levers before the next puzzle comes up?!?!”

That second problem is a stressful one.

But it only exists because of the way the Subject framed the problem.

Have you ever framed a problem “into existence?”

I think that it’s not uncommon for “Madison Avenue” (synecdoche for American Advertising Industry) to do just that. Unlike my classmate, Madison Avenue is intentionally framing a problem for their clients.

“Do you suffer from straight elbow wrinkle? Millions of Americans suffer from straight elbow wrinkles without even knowing! Check right now. It may save you millions! Go to a mirror and straighten your arm. Is your elbow skin nice and tight? Or is it filled with unsightly wrinkles? Don’t be embarrassed! Millions of your fellow Americans also suffer. Now, you need suffer no longer! By use of this ointment, one shilling the box, your elbow skin will stay fit, taught, and youthful looking!”

Is this a real problem? It may become one for anyone who succumbs to the advertising pitch above. The company promoting “Elbow Cream” had a problem: “How do we make more money even though we have no decent products that solve real problems?” They transfigured their problem into one for their customers. Some would say this is just business as usual. And, if the Elbow Cream has horrendous side-effects, that’s no big deal so long as you sputter out those side-effects quickly & unintelligibly on your TV commercials against a background of music, dancing, and flowers.

Maybe it’s business as usual.

There is an alternative though. The “Elbow Cream” company could have instead sought to understand some real problem, figured out how to solve it and then marketed that solution. To me, the difference between the two, in terms of ethics is huge.

What do you think?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Sternberg

https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/research-methods-key-term-glossary

https://petersironwood.com/2017/10/02/you-know/

https://petersironwood.com/2017/02/25/the-invisibility-cloak-of-habit/

There’s a Pill for That!There’s a Pill for That!

https://petersironwood.com/2017/03/24/the-great-race-to-the-finish/

Author Page on Amazon

Problem Formulation: Who Knows What?

18 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

browser, HCI, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, query, search, thinking, usability, UX

This post focuses on the importance of discovering who knows what. It’s easy to think (without thinking!) that everyone knows what you know.

At IBM Research, around the turn of the century, I was asked to look at improving customer satisfaction about the search function on IBM’s website. Rather than using someone else’s search engine, IBM used one developed at IBM’s Haifa Research lab. It was a very good search engine. Yet, customers were not happy. By way of background, it’s worth noting that compared with many companies who have websites, IBM’s website was meant for a wide variety of users and contained many kinds of information. It was meant to support people buying their first Personal Computer and IT experts at large banks. It had information about a wide variety of hardware, software, and services. The site was designed to serve as an attractor for investors, business partners, and potential employees. In other words, the site was vast and diverse. This made having a good search function particularly important.

A little study of the existing data which had been collected showed that the mean number of search terms entered by customers was only 1.2. What?? How can that be? Here’s a website with thousands of products and services and designed for use by a huge diversity of users and they were only entering a mean of 1.2 search terms? What were they thinking?!

Of course, there were a handful of situations when one search term might work; e.g., if you wanted to find out everything about a specific product that had a unique one-word name (which was rare) or acronym. For most situations though, a more “reasonable” search might be something like: “Open positions IBM Research Austin” or “PC external hard drives” or “LOTUS NOTES training.”

We invited a sample of users of IBM products & services to come into the lab and do some tasks that we designed to illuminate this issue. In the task, they would need to find specified information on the IBM website while I observed them. One issue became immediately apparent. The search bar on the landing page was far too small. In actuality, users could enter as many search terms as they liked. Their terms would keep scrolling and scrolling until they hit “ENTER.” The developers knew this, but most of our users did not. They assumed they had to “fit” their query into the very small footprint that presented itself visually. Recommendation one was simply to make that space much larger. Once the search bar was expanded to about three times its original size, the number of search terms increased dramatically, as did user satisfaction.

In this case, the users framed their search problem in terms of: “How can I make the best query that fits into this tiny box.” (I’m not suggesting they said this to themselves consciously, but the visual affordance led them to that constraint). The developers thought the users would frame their search problem in terms of: “What’s the best sequence of terms I can put into this virtually infinite window to get the search results I want.” After all, the developers knew that any number of terms could be entered.

Although increasing the size of the search bar made a big difference, the supposedly good search engine still returned many amazingly bad results. Why? The people at the Haifa lab who had developed the search engine were world class. At some point, I looked at the HTML of some of the web pages. Many web pages had masses of irrelevant metadata! I found some of the people who developed these web pages and discussed things with them. Can you guess what was going on?

Many of the developers of web pages were the same people who had been developing print media for those same products and services. They had no training and no idea about metadata. So, to put up the webpage about product XYZ, they would go to a nice-looking web page about something else, say, training opportunities for ABC. They would copy that entire page, including the metadata, and then set about changing the text about ABC to text about product XYZ. In many cases, they assumed that the strange stuff in angle brackets was some bizarre coding stuff that was necessary for the page to operate properly. They left it untouched. Furthermore, when they “tested” the pages they had created about XYZ, they looked okay. The information about XYZ was there. Problem solved.

Only of course, the problem wasn’t solved. The search engine considered the metadata that described the contents to be even more important than the contents themselves. So, the user would issue a query about XYZ and receive links about ABC because the XYZ page still had the “invisible” metadata about ABC. In this case, many of the website developers thought their problem was to put in good data when what they really needed to do was put in good data and relevant metadata.

A third issue also revealed itself from watching users. In attempting to do their tasks, many of them suggested that IBM should provide a way for more than one webpage to appear side by side on the screen so that they could, for instance, compare features and functions of two different product models rather than having to copy the information from the web page about a particular model and then compare their notes to the second page.

Good suggestion.

Of course, IBM & Microsoft had provided this function. All one had to do was “Right Click” in order to bring up a new window. Remember, these were not naive users. These were people who actually used IBM products. They “knew” how to use the PC and the main applications. Yet, they were still unfamiliar with the use of Right Click. Indeed, allowing on-screen comparisons is one of the handiest uses of Right-Click for many people.

This issue is indicative of a very pervasive problem. Ironically, it is an outgrowth of good usability! When I began working with computers, almost nothing was intuitive. No-one would even attempt to start programming in FORTRAN or SNOBOL, let alone Assembly Language or Machine Code without looking at the manual. But LOTUS NOTES? A browser? A modern text editor? You can use these without even looking at the manual. That’s a great thing. But —

…there’s a downside. The downside is that you may have developed procedures that work, but they may be extremely inefficient. You “muddle through” without ever realizing that there’s a much more efficient way to do things. Generally speaking, many users formulate their problem, say, in terms like: “How do I create and edit a document in this editor?” They do not formulate it in terms of: “How do I efficiently create and edit a document in this editor?” The developers know all the splendid features and functions they’ve put into the hardware and software, but the user doesn’t.

It’s also worth noting that results in HCI/UX are dependent on the context. I would tend to assume that in 2021 (when I first published this post), most PC users knew about right-clicking in a browser even though in 2000, none of the ones I studied seemed to realize it. But —

I could be wrong.

————————————

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit

Essays on America: Wednesday

Index to a catalog of “best practices” in teamwork & collaboration.

Author Page on Amazon

I Went in Seeking Clarity

16 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

parallel programming, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, programming, thinking, tools, X10

“I stopped by the bar at 3 A.M.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before
And I went in seeking clarity” — Lyrics from The Indigo Girls: Closer to Fine

If you think programming is cognitively difficult, try parallel programming. It is generally harder to design, to code, and to debug than its sequential cousin. One of the fun projects I worked on at IBM Research was on the X10 language which was designed to enable parallel programmers to be more productive. Among other things, I fostered community among X10 programmers and used analytic techniques to show that X10 “should be” more productive. Although these analytic techniques are very useful, we also wanted to get some empirical data that the language was, in actuality, more productive.

Photo by Dominika Greguu0161ovu00e1 on Pexels.com

One part of those empirical studies involved comparing people doing a few parallel programming tasks in X10 to those using a popular competitor. But, like many other “chicken and egg” problems, there were no X10 programmers (other than the inventors and their colleagues). I was part of a team who travelled to Rice University in Houston. The design called for one group to spend a chunk of time learning X10 (perhaps half a day) and another chunk of time coding some problems.

Besides the three behavioral scientists like me who were there to make observations, there were also three high-powered Ph.D. computer scientists present who would teach the language. Programmers tend to be very smart. Parallel programmers tend to be very very smart. People who can invent better languages to do parallel programming? You do the math.

Anyway, after the volunteers students had arrived, one of the main designers of the language began to “teach them” X10.

But — there was a problem.

The powerpoint presentation designed to teach the students X10 was far too blurry to read!

Immediately, the three computer scientists tried to issue commands to the projector to put the images in focus. Nothing worked. The three of them began a fascinating problem solving conversation about what communication protocol(s) among the PC, the projector, and the controller was the likely source of the problem. I suppose it might not have been fascinating to everyone, but it was to me. First, it fascinated me because I was learning something about computer science and communication protocols. Second, it fascinated me because I loved to watch these people think. I suppose many of the advanced computer science students who were in this classroom to learn X10 also found it interesting. But the study had completely stalled.

After a few minutes of fascinating conversation that did nothing to focus the images, something possessed me to walk over to the projector and turn the lens by hand. The images were immediately clear and the rest of the experiment continued.

The three computer scientists had “framed” the problem as a computer science problem and I found the discussion that sprang from that framing to be fascinating. But one of the part-time jobs I had had as an undergraduate was as a “projectionist” at Case-Western, and it was that experience that allowed me to try framing the problem differently. All of us have huge reservoirs of experience outside of our professional “training” and those experiences can sometimes be important sources of alternative ways to frame a problem, issue, or situation.

———————————-

Essays on America: Wednesday

Essays on America: The Update Problem

Essays on America: The Stopping Rule

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit

Author Page on Amazon

I Say: Hello! You Say: “What City Please?”

16 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

efficiency, HCI, human factors, problem framing, problem solving, UX

In the not so distant past, people would often call directory assistance operators. These operators would find a number for you. For an additional charge, they would dial it for you. In fact, this was a very commonly used system. Phone companies would have large rooms filled with such operators who worked very hard and very politely, communicating with a hostile and irrational public.

Customer: “I have to get the number of that bowling alley right near where the A&P used to be before they moved into that new shopping center.”

Operator: “Sir, you haven’t told me what town you’re in. Anyway…”

Customer: “What town?! Why I’m right here in Woburn where I’ve always been!”

There were so many operators that the phone companies wanted their processes to be efficient. Operators were trained to be friendly and genial but not chatty. The phone companies searched for better keyboards and better screen layouts to shave a second here or there off the average time it took to handle a call.

There are some interesting stories in that attempt but that we will save for another article, but here I want to tell you what made the largest impact on the average time per call. Not a keyboard. Not a display. Not an AI system.

It was simply changing the greeting.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Operators were saying something like: “New England Telephone. How can I help you?”

After our intervention, operators instead said, “What city please?” It’s shorter and it’s takes less time to say. But the big change was not in how long the operator took to ask the question. The biggest savings was how this change in greeting impacted the customer’s behavior.

When the operator begins with “How can I help you?” the customer, or at least some fraction of them, are put into a frame of mind of a conversation. They might respond thusly:

“Oh, well, you know my niece is getting married! Yeah! In just a month, and she still hasn’t shopped for a dress! Can you believe it? So, I need the number for that — if it were up to me, I would go traditional, but my niece? She’s — she’s going avant-garde so I need the number of that dress shop on Main Street here in Arlington.”

Photo by Tuu1ea5n Kiu1ec7t Jr. on Pexels.com

With the “What City Please?” greeting, the customer is put into a more businesslike frame of mind and answers more succinctly. They now understand their role as proving information in a joint problem solving task with the operator. A typical answer would now be:

“Arlington.”

“In Arlington, what listing?”

“Dress shop on Main Street.”

The way in which a conversation begins signals what type of conversation it is to be. We know this intuitively. Suppose you walked up to an old friend and they begin with: “Name?” You would be taken aback. On the other hand, suppose you walk up to the line at the DMV and the clerk says, “Hey, have you seen that latest blog post by John Thomas on problem framing?” You would be equally perplexed!

Conversation can be thought of partly as a kind of mutual problem solving exercise. And, before that problem solving even begins, one party or the other will tend to “frame” the conversation. That framing can be incredibly important.

Even the very first words can cause someone to frame what kind of a conversation this is meant to be.

Words matter.

The Primacy Effect and The Destroyer’s Advantage

https://petersironwood.com/2018/02/13/context-setting-entrance/

Essays on America: Wednesday

Author Page on Amazon

Problem Framing: Good Point!

14 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, thinking, tools

You have probably heard variations on this old saw, “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” I’ve also heard, “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” There is also this popular anecdote:

One night, I took my dog out for a walk and I noticed one of my neighbors under a nearby street lamp crawling around on his hands and knees, apparently looking for something. I walked over and asked, “What are you looking for?”

“My car keys!” He replied.

I have pretty good vision, so I helped him. I didn’t see any car keys so after a minute or so I asked, “Where exactly did you lose your keys?”

He stood up, cracked his back, and pointed back to a nearby park. “Over there.”

“Over there?! Then, why are you looking under the street lamp? Why aren’t you looking over at the park entrance?”

“Oh, that’s obvious! The light is so much better here!”

For a time, I had to very interesting and challenging job in the mid 1980’s at IBM Headquarters to try to get the company to pay more attention to the usability of their products and services. As a part of this, I visited IBM locations throughout the world. At one fabrication plant, our tour guide took us by an inspection station. This was not an inspection statement for chips. It consisted of one person whose job was to look through a microscope and make sure that two silver needles were perfectly aligned.

After we left the station, our tour guide confided that they were strongly considering replacing the person with a machine vision system. The anticipated cost would be substantial, but they hypothesized that the system would be more accurate and faster. It was, our host, insisted, just the nature of humans to be slow and inaccurate.

Maybe.

When I looked at the inspection station however, with my background in human factors, I had a completely different impression of the situation. The inspector sat on a fixed height stool and had to bend his neck at an absurd angle to look into the microscope. He was trying to align these silver needles against a background that had almost the same hue, brightness and saturation.

Other than blindfolding the man, I’m not sure what they could have done to make the task more unnecessarily difficult. I suggested, and eventually, they implemented, a few inexpensive ergonomic changes and time and accuracy improved.

Like other companies in the technology segment, IBM often saw problems as ones that could be solved by technology. At that time, technology systems was their main business. Since then, they have expanded more fully into software and services. In fact, those services now include experience design.

https://www.ibm.com/services/business/experience-design

(NOTE: Since I first published this post, the link above no longer takes you to experience-design but to general consulting services. Too bad.)

If you find yourself enamored of technology in general, or some specific class of technology such as machine vision, speech recognition, or machine learning, you might overlook much simpler and cheaper ways to solve problems or ameliorate situations. Of course, you might lose some revenue doing that, but you can also win long term customer loyalty.

Even if you are a hammer, everything is not a nail.

That applies as well to User Experience. You might design the most wonderful UX imaginable for a particular product or service. But if it is shoddily made so that it is error prone; if it lacks important functionality; if the sales force is inept; or if service is horrible, those failures can completely overwhelm all the good work you have done on the UX. Because of the nature of UX, you might learn important knowledge or suggestions for other functions as well. It often requires finesse to have such suggestions taken seriously, but with some thought you can do it.

During my second stint at IBM, I worked for a time in a field known at that time as “Knowledge Management.” One of our potential clients was a major Pharma company who felt that their researchers should do a better job of sharing knowledge across products. They wanted us to design a “knowledge management system” (by which they meant hardware and software) to improve knowledge sharing.

Simply building a “Knowledge Management System” would be looking under the streetlamp. They knew how to specify a technology solution from IBM and have it installed.

However — they were unwilling to provide any additional space, time, or incentives for their employees to share knowledge with their colleagues!

Photo by Chokniti Khongchum on Pexels.com

They were convinced that technology would be the silver bullet, the solution, the answer, the Holy Grail, the magic pill. They viewed technology as less disruptive than it would have been to change employee incentives, or space layout, or give them time to actually learn and use the technology system.

This reaction to “knowledge management” was not unique. It was common.

To me, this seems very similar to the notion that health problems can all be solved with a magic pill. What do you think?

—————————————

There’s a pill for that.

The Pandemic Anti-Academic.

What about the butter dish?

The invisibility cloak of habit.

Author Page on Amazon

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

13 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, thinking

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

This is the second in a series about the importance of correctly framing a problem. Generally, at least in formal American education, the teacher gives you a problem. Not only that, if you are in Algebra class, you know the answer will be an answer based in Algebra. If you are in art class, you’re expected to paint a picture. If you painted a picture in Algebra class, or wrote down a formula in Art Class, they would send you to the principal for punishment. But in real life, how a problem is presented may actually be far from the most elegant solution to the real problem.

Doing a google search on “problem solving” just now yielded 208 million results. Entering “problem framing” only had 182 thousand. A thousand times as much emphasis on problem solving as there was on problem framing. [Update: I redid the search today, a little over three years later. On 3/6/2024, I got 542M hits on “problem solving” and 218K hits on “problem framing” — increases in both but the ratio is even worse than it was in 2021]. Yet, let’s think about that for a moment. If you have wrongly framed the problem, you not only will not have solved the real problem; what’s worse, you will have convinced yourself that you have solved the problem. This will make it much more difficult to recognize and solve the real problem even for a solitary thinker. And to make a political change required to redirect hundreds or thousands will be incalculably more difficult.

All of that brings us to today’s story. For about a decade, I worked as executive director of an AI lab for a company in the computers & communication industry. At one point, in the late 1980’s, all employees were all supposed to sign some new paperwork. An office manager called from a building several miles away asking me to have my admin work with his admin to sign up a schedule for all 45 people in my AI lab to go over to his office and sign this paperwork as soon as possible. That would be a mildly interesting logistics problem, and I might even be tempted to step in and help solve it. More likely, if I tried to solve it, some much brighter & more competent colleague would have done it much faster.

Photo by Charlie Solorzano on Pexels.com

But why?

Why would I ask each of 45 people to interrupt their work; walk to their cars; drive in traffic; park in a new location; find this guy’s office; walk up there; sign some paper; walk out; find their car; drive back; park again; walk back to their office and try to remember where the heck they were? Instead, I told him that wasn’t happening but he’d be welcome to come over here and have people sign the paperwork.

You could make an argument that that was 4500% improvement in productivity, but I think that understates the case. The administrator’s work, at least in this regard, was to get this paperwork signed. He didn’t need to do mental calculations to tie these signings together. On the other hand, a lot of the work that the AI folks did was hard mental work. That means that interrupting them would be much more destructive than it would to interrupt the administrator in his watching someone sign their name. Even that understates the case because many of the people in AI worked collaboratively and (perhaps you remember those days) people were working face to face. Software tools to coordinate work were not as sophisticated as they are now. Often, having one team member disappear for a half hour would not only impact their own work, it would impact the work of everyone on the team.

Quantitatively comparing apples and oranges is always tricky. Of course, I am also biased because my colleagues were people I greatly admire. Nonetheless, it seems obvious that the way the problem was presented was a non-optimal “framing.” It may or may not have been presented that way because of a purely selfish standpoint; that is, wanting to do what’s most convenient for oneself rather than what’s best for the company as a whole. I suspect that it was more likely just the first idea that occurred to him. But in your own life, beware. Sometimes, you will mis-frame a problem because of “natural causes.” But sometimes, people may intentionally hand you a bad framing because they view it as being in their interest to lead you to solve the wrong problem.

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Author Page on Amazon

Tools of Thought

A Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation

The Myths of the Veritas: The First Ring of Empathy

Essays on America: Wednesday

Essays on America: The Stopping Rule

Essays on America: The Update Problem

petersironwood

~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

Tag Archives: problem framing

Training Your Professor for Fun & Profit

A Long Day’s Journey into Hangover

The Slow-Seeming Snapping Turtle

Measure for Measure

How to Frame Your Own Hamster Wheel

Problem Formulation: Who Knows What?

I Went in Seeking Clarity

I Say: Hello! You Say: “What City Please?”

Problem Framing: Good Point!

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper