Overcoming Impasses in Design Problem Solving: Environmental Input and Sources of Design Breakthroughs

大多数人在试图解决难题时都有过“卡住”的经历。 例如，在设计一种新型低排放车辆的背景下，设计师可能会陷入僵局，试图找出如何最佳地定位油箱，因为车辆设计还必须满足许多其他限制。 当问题解决者专注于问题空间的单一表示时，可能会出现问题解决的僵局。 只有退后一步，改变问题空间的表现方式，才能克服这种僵局。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，凯根博士和科托夫斯基博士正在研究影响工程设计领域中问题空间如何表现的认知和技术因素，以及在面临僵局时如何改变这些表现。 他们的工作有望促进我们对人们如何克服创造性解决问题的重大障碍的理解-人们如何找到“啊哈”，帮助他们解决困难的设计问题，导致新的创新。 该项目包括实验室工作，收集实验数据的僵局条件下解决问题，再加上基于代理的计算模型的核心认知过程中涉及的问题解决。 这些研究活动的一个重要目标是创造可用于课堂和工作场所的知识，以更有效地激发人类的创造力，并为计算机设计工具提供平台，为创新过程提供建议和支持。

Most people have had the experience of ''getting stuck'' while trying to solve a hard problem. In the context of designing a new kind of low-emissions vehicle, for instance, a designer might reach an impasse in trying to figure out how to optimally position the fuel tank, given the many other constraints on vehicle design that must also be satisfied. Impasses in problem-solving can occur when the problem solver is fixated on a single representation of the problem space. Such impasses can be overcome only if one steps back and changes how the problem space is represented. With support of the National Science Foundation, Drs. Cagan and Kotovsky are investigating cognitive and technological factors that influence how problem spaces in the domain of engineering design are represented, and how such representations can be changed in the face of an impasse. Their work promises to advance our understanding of how people overcome significant hurdles in creative problem solving -- how people find the ''aha'' that helps them solve difficult design problems that lead to new innovations. The project consists of laboratory work to collect experimental data on problem solving under impasse conditions, coupled with agent-based computational models of core cognitive processes involved in problem solving. An important goal of these research activities is to create knowledge that can be used in the classroom and workplace to more effectively stimulate human creativity, and provide a platform for computer design tools that advise and support the innovation process.