“Most of us do not have to think about what else a table, a pillow, or a toilet paper roll could be, because they work fine as they are. These objects are successful in this way, but the material and functional possibilities of the standardized objects are then rarely explored as a result of this ’success’.”
Yes, it is a very fundamental human tendency to stop problem solving once an ‘adequate’ solution has been reached, and devote time and energy instead to problems that are currently ‘unsolved’. This mechanism contributes to partial and incomplete solutions reaching mass production, and makes it (unfortunately) more remarkable when elegant and refined solutions turn up in the products of engineering and industrial design. How do we overcome this? At what point do we declare a solution ‘good enough’ to proceed to production?
We could consider each solution we iterate as getting us only half way to the solution. But then it becomes a Xeno’s Paradox, requiring and infinite number of iterations to reach the goal. 1 iteration = 50%, 2 = 75%, 3 = 87.5%, etc. Is 93.7% still an ‘A’? At what point do we call off the search for a missing child?
Discussion (1)
“Most of us do not have to think about what else a table, a pillow, or a toilet paper roll could be, because they work fine as they are. These objects are successful in this way, but the material and functional possibilities of the standardized objects are then rarely explored as a result of this ’success’.”
Yes, it is a very fundamental human tendency to stop problem solving once an ‘adequate’ solution has been reached, and devote time and energy instead to problems that are currently ‘unsolved’. This mechanism contributes to partial and incomplete solutions reaching mass production, and makes it (unfortunately) more remarkable when elegant and refined solutions turn up in the products of engineering and industrial design. How do we overcome this? At what point do we declare a solution ‘good enough’ to proceed to production?
We could consider each solution we iterate as getting us only half way to the solution. But then it becomes a Xeno’s Paradox, requiring and infinite number of iterations to reach the goal. 1 iteration = 50%, 2 = 75%, 3 = 87.5%, etc. Is 93.7% still an ‘A’? At what point do we call off the search for a missing child?