think obvious

Many times we get stuck with our designs because we’re trying to “think outside the box.” By this we mean “to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_outside_the_box]. The name apparently comes from a famous nine dot puzzle: link all nine dots using four straight lines or less, without lifting the pen.

Try it. The solution can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ninedots.svg. Most people fail this problem, assuming they’ve not seen it before; and when given permission to draw outside the lines, many continue to fail. What seems to help is practice on simpler dot-puzzle solution training (Weisberg, 1993, Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genius).

Nevertheless, the dot puzzle haunts us. It’s as if anything other than out-of-the-box thinking is less creative. Even the admonishment to be “computer imaginative” suggests this kind of unconventional thinking. And for us as interactive designers we get stuck. In our quest to be imaginative we forget the problem that’s in front of us. Often the solution is to “think obvious.” So often it’s the simple and straight-forward solution—the obvious solution—that works so well.

I remember when the first graphics browser, Mosaic, was released in 1993 by a team at the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA). I was interested in this for two reasons: it made use of the then new world-wide-web in a powerful way, and it was an invention from my alma mater (and located just two blocks away from where I used to work on the campus). What was so impressive about Mosaic is that it provided simple support for text, graphics, sound, and video in a single application.

At the time I was working as the Director of Research and Development at Indiana University’s Center for Excellence in Education (CEE). My colleague, Gerry Sousa, and I were developing a concept called “the virtual textbook,” suggesting that textbooks as we know them would soon disappear and be replaced by “a hypermedia information environment that combines local and distributed course content, instruction, and powerful support utilities in a single integrated problem-centered delivery environment—an on-demand educational delivery system” (Siegel, M. A., & Sousa, G. A. (1994). Inventing the Virtual Textbook: Changing the Nature of Schooling. Educational Technology, 34(7), 49-54.) Given this description, it’s not difficult to understand why we were interested in Mosaic and web technology; we saw it as a technical solution, in part, for the virtual textbook.

Why am I telling you this story? Not because Mosaic was an obvious solution for world wide web users, and not because the browser would turn out to be an obvious solution to virtual textbook development. No, I’m telling you this story because of what happened next.

While Gerry and I were working in the CEE, one of us turned to the other (I can’t remember if it was Gerry or me who first made the suggestion) and said, “You know, with all of these ‘web sites’ coming out, maybe we should make an index and categorize them.” “No, that’s too simple an idea,” responded the other. “Anyone can do that. We’ll never get known for creating an index.”

Dumb.

In 1994, two Stanford students, David Filo and Jerry Yang, created a web site called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” The index grew into categories and subcategories. In 1995 they incorporated and called their business Yahoo!

What’s the point of the story? Gerry and I thought that creating an index of web sites was too simple, too obvious. We wanted to work on the more sophisticated idea of a virtual textbook. We rejected what was before us. We didn’t pay close attention to what people needed at the time—a simple way to categorize and access the growing number of web sites. Filo and Yang delivered the obvious.

Designing the obvious is not simply about the overall goal. It’s also about the detailed solutions to a problem. Sometimes the simple and the straightforward—done well—is the best and most elegant solution to a problem. Sometimes, of course, it helps to think outside the box. But often the solution is right in front of us and we can’t even see it.

Postscript. Fifteen years later, we see glimmers of what Gerry and I conceived for the virtual textbook: the web and browser technology is well-established; electronic whiteboards and portable computing devices—laptops, iPhones, and Kindles—are readily available. What’s still missing are the demonstrated instructional strategies to drive the virtual textbook: “The Virtual Textbook is an environment. Its goal is to move students beyond content mastery to information seeking and problem solving skills: asking appropriate and significant questions of the content, evaluating and synthesizing information from diverse sources (including sources accessed over networks), understanding the difference between (and appropriate applications of) facts and opinion, grasping multiple and diverse perspectives, and drawing insights from these perspectives within the context of one’s own knowledge base and experiences. It provides the student of the future with the power to become effective and creative learners.” An elusive goal? Maybe not. Perhaps the solution is right in front of me and I can’t see the obvious.