Refined experience has a major focus as they are broadly and commonly useful. Even when experience has not been codified, it may still be found in preexisting systems. If a designer is ignorant of experience, a new problem is a novel one for that designer. The designer needs to adopt a strategy and control it.
Failure to meet the needs of a new design challenge with approaches based upon past experience demands a rethinking of the problem and approaches to that solution. The following processes can be followed:
- Divergence- It is the step taken to shake-off the confines of inadequate prior approaches and discover, or admit a variety of new ideas, conceptions and approaches that offer the promise of a workable solution.
- Transformation- It is a combination of analysis and selection. Based upon the information from the divergence step, solution possibilities and new understandings of the problem statement are examined and formulated.
- Convergence- It is the step of selecting and further refining ideas until a single approach is selected for further detailed development.
There are both difficulties and risks in the critical first step. One difficulty is breaking free from prior understanding and approaches to the problem area. Moving into a new territory is viewed skeptically.
Another risk is tunnel vision. This occurs when an approach is explored which breaks sharply from previous practice but the enthusiasm for that approach inhibits any attempt to explore other novel alternatives.
Detailed strategies: There exist numerous strategies for helping a designer to tackle novel problems, most of which are general and are appropriately focused on the divergence step. They are not specific to software development. Some strategies involve -
- Analogy Searching- here, examination of other fields and disciplines unrelated to the target problems is done in order to obtain ideas that are analogous to the problem at hand and formulate a solution strategy based on that analogy. The utility of analogies is in providing rich sets of initial concepts for developing a solution to a design problem.
- Brain storming- It is the technique of rapidly generating a wide set of ideas and thoughts pertaining to a design problem without initially assessing the feasibility. The chief value of brainstorming is in identifying categories of possible designs other than any specific design solution suggested during a session.
- Literature Searching- It is the process of examining published information to identify material that can be used to guide or inspire designers. The availability of free and open-source software adds special value to this technique. Even if a direct solution to the problem at hand is not freely available, the designer may be able to devise a solution using pieces of preexisting software.
- Morphological charts- The idea here is to identify all primary functions to be performed by desired system, identify a means of performing that function and attempt to chose one means for each function such that the collection of means performs all the required functions in a compatible manner. This technique offers help in constructing a variety of approaches to parts of the overall problem.
- Removing mental Blocks- Many a times it is possible to get stuck on a problem. The chief strategy to tackle this is transformation. If a problem cannot be solved, change it to a problem that can be solved. The solution of the revised problem may suggest a new avenue for attacking the original problem.
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