How to Solve It

I’m taking my turn reading George Pólya’s 1945 book, How to Solve It. While I can’t claim that this classic book about how to solve math problems is the key to unlocking the perfect design process, I can say that it has reminded me of some important things that I’ve either forgotten or started to ignore over time. I’d like to share some of those lessons with you.

Pólya lists four steps in the problem solving process:

1. Understand the problem
2. Create a plan
3. Carry out the plan
4. Review and reflect

As designers we put a lot of thought into understanding problems. We seem to spend less time thinking about the approach we should take to solving problems. And taking time to reflect once the work is done happens rarely, or too late if it happens at all.

Creating a plan

Not developing a plan is a trap that newer and more experienced designers are both susceptible to. Newer designers don’t always have enough experience to know what the possible steps are, and more experienced designers might have so much experience that they take process for granted and skip important steps. But Pólya reminded me that having a plan allows you to be more deliberate in your process and assess progress towards your goal.

Having a plan means moving with intent. A plan helps you control the extent to which you throw ideas into the void and see if any of them stick. There is a time for purposeful play and experimentation in the design process, but you want to avoid flailing, and hoping you land on a helpful idea. By thinking about your moves in advance you ensure that you are always moving with purpose, even if you don’t know exactly how things will turn out, or how your plan might have to change as a result of the things you discover.

Uncovering insights that shape your definition of the problem along the way is a hallmark of the design process, and I recognize it’s impossible to make a perfect plan and stick to it every step of the way. You need to be open to changing the plan along the way. The important thing is that when you take a step you do it with full knowledge of why you’re doing it and what you hope to accomplish.

Taking time to reflect

When you release a feature or product it can be so tempting to move on to the next thing. The pressures of work demand it. But if you don’t take time to stop and reflect on what you’ve done, it will be hard to use what you’ve learned to solve future problems. Your knowledge and experience won’t compound over time.

So when you reach a stopping point with your work, maybe when the feature you’re designing finally ships, take time to ask yourself the following questions:

What steps did I take along the way and how effective was each one? What worked? What didn’t work? What could I have done differently?

These questions set you up for the next design problem, and the next time you need to make plan. Over time you start to learn what steps work better than others and you become a more efficient problem solver, but these insights don’t solidify unless you give them enough time and attention. If you don’t think critically about what didn’t work and why, you’ll repeat your mistakes.

How does the problem I just solved relate to other problems that I might need to solve now or in the future?

These questions are important for developing into a more holistic thinker. When you begin a new project it can sometimes feel like you’re starting with a blank page, and that’s intimidating. But if you observe and consider the relationships between all the problems and solutions that you’ve ever encountered, you’ll find that you’re never truly starting from a blank page. It just takes time and deliberate reflection to learn to recognize those connections.

Summary

How to Solve It is a book full of knowledge applicable to solving any problem. The most important lessons I took from the book remind me that although the design process is fuzzier than math, most designers would benefit from being a little more deliberate and reflective overall. Making a plan, following that plan, and then taking time to reflect on how effective it was are habits that will make you a more effective, thoughtful designer.

References

Polya, G. (2014). How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.