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

大多数人都有过在试图解决难题时“陷入困境”的经历。例如，在设计一种新的低排放汽车时，设计师可能会陷入僵局，试图找出如何优化油箱的位置，因为汽车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中的僵局。只有后退一步，改变问题空间的表示方式，这样的僵局才能被克服。在国家科学基金会的支持下，卡根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，以及如何在面临僵局时改变这种表现。他们的工作有望增进我们对人们如何克服创造性问题解决中的重大障碍的理解--人们如何找到帮助他们解决导致新创新的困难设计问题的“啊哈”。该项目包括收集在僵局条件下解决问题的实验数据的实验室工作，以及涉及问题解决的核心认知过程的基于代理的计算模型。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创造力，并为为创新过程提供建议和支持的计算机设计工具提供平台。

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.