Have you ever gotten stuck when trying to discover a solution to a problem? This is what we’re exploring in the previous episode and this episode. We talked about how it helps to expand our thinking to other avenues to help get us unstuck.
Last week, we talked about reframing our problem within its contradictions, considering what it is, what it’s not, and then taking a moment to make some observations and distinctions with what we see when we put it all together.
Besides reframing, we can also take a step back and look at the bigger picture, how our problem fits into the macro system. And then we can zoom in and think about how it fits into the micro system. We can also expand our problem time-wise into the past, and then into the future. Today, we’re going to be talking about a matrix that can help us do that after this brief introduction.
Hello and welcome to Quality during Design, the place to use quality thinking to create products others love for less. My name is Dianna. I’m a senior level quality professional and engineer with over 20 years of experience in manufacturing and design. Listen in and then join the conversation qualityduringdesign.com.
Last week we talked about an Is/Is-Not Matrix. The Is/Is-Mot Matrix can help us put together all the information of a problem that we’ve been investigating for a while. We’ve had a problem. We’ve been doing different tests or investigating different avenues, and we’ve gotten stuck and don’t know how to get unstuck. We can’t solve the problem. The Is/Is-Not Matrix helps us organize those thoughts, put them all together and then stop and observe or make some distinctions about the data that we have so we can determine the next steps in solving our problem.
Another way to look at a problem if we are stuck and just don’t know what the next step should be is another matrix called the nine windows. With the nine windows matrix, we’re instead thinking about our problem itself in the context of time and its position within whatever system we’re looking at. How is the nine windows matrix built? It’s a grid of three rows and three columns. So we have nine different panes (or sections, or boxes, if you will). This matrix is called the nine windows because it looks like a window that has the grills in it – the windows that you would normally see in Northeast colonial houses with the different panes.
Now the middle row in the middle column are our baseline time and system. So right in the center of our nine windows matrix is where we put our current problem statement. We’re defining what’s happening right now with the level of the system that we’re trying to fix. We’re literally centering in on our problem and making sure that it’s defined well. Then we radiate out from the center of this matrix to consider different levels of the system and different timeframes of our problem.
Typically our different columns are past present and future. And our different system levels is our super system, our system, and then our subsystem. We zoom in on the very center of this nine windows matrix, which is our problem statement. And we look to the future. The future is where we’re going to want to put our goal: what is it we want to solve? Or what do we wanna have happen at the end of our solving this problem? That is our future state of the current problem of our system that we have, that is the future state of our current problem. Then we can shift our viewpoint to the past. What was it that was happening that could have led to us having this problem?
From there, we can continue to zoom out into the super system or the macro level of whatever it is that we’re trying to fix. We have this problem currently in the present state, what is it affecting in the bigger picture? What problem could it affect in the future? And what were some of the big things that could have been happening that could lead to the problem? Then we can shift our view into the macro or the subsystem viewpoint. Are there any lower level components that are causing the issues? What was going on with those components in the past that could have led to having this problem? And what do we want to fix with these subcomponents to reach our goal of the future?
Nine windows is typically considered part of a system called TRIZ, theory of inventive problem solving. TRIZ is a systematic way to understand problems and to solve them. (And by the way, it’s spelled out T R I Z).
Genrich Altshuller was a Russian patent agent in the 1940s. Him and his team studied the abstracts of global patent applications and literature. And they looked for trends in patterns, commonalities, and solutions to solve problems across different industries. To be awarded a patent, it has to be innovative and unique enough to not infringe on a patent that already exists. Looking at patents was considered a database of innovative ideas across different industries. In all, they looked at about 40,000 patent abstracts, and they distilled those innovative ideas into general rules.
The first rule is someone has done it before, even if it’s in a different industry. They notice that problems and solutions repeated and technical evolution repeated.
General rule number two is that new ideas are usually based on some technology that was developed in a different industry in a new way. They also noted that these innovative solutions overcame a trade off between two things that contradicted each other like increased performance versus higher cost, faster melt time versus lower temperature of device move a heavier load versus lighter weight of device gee. Genrich continued to develop these rules into a matrix and try to distill what he learned into 40 principles of TRIZ. Genrich abandoned some of the matrix ideas because they just became too complicated. Other people took them and tried to use them. And the 40 principles of TRIZ are still around today.
What wasn’t available in the 1940s was the internet. The Center for the Transformation of Work has a searchable directory of marketplaces that are built to cross pollinate industries with innovative ideas. Here’s a story that I had heard about. I can’t find the references to it, but I thought this was intriguing enough, I remembered it! A potato chip manufacturer wanted solutions to remove excess oil so they would get a crispier chip. A violinist proposed a sonic solution, using their knowledge of music and vibrations to provide the chip manufacturer with a solution. Now, this is following the general rules of TRIZ that Genrich noticed when he was looking at all those patent abstracts: someone’s done it before, technical evolution is repeated, and new ideas are based on some technology already developed in a different industry. In this case, the new idea was to use sonics to remove excess oil from a potato chip. The industry that knew all about sonics was the music industry – the industry of people that make world class violins. And the new industry was the prepackaged food industry.
There are a lot of online marketplaces where companies can post problems and other people can look at the problem and see if they can offer a solution. Now, the companies that post a problem, generally, don’t just lay out all the details of their problem. They may isolate a certain aspect of a problem and post it to the marketplace and ask if anybody in a different industry has an innovative idea to help them solve their problem. I’ll include a link to the Center for the Transformation of Work on the podcast blog.
Going back to the nine windows matrix, I think we have to put ourselves into the frame of mind of TRIZ and follow some of those general rules: someone’s done it before, even if it’s a different industry. If we step back from our problem and look at it from different points of view (time wise, along the time spectrum) and look at it from a different point of view from our system (microsystem versus macrosystem), we might be able to start exploring different, innovative ideas to solve our problem. By doing this, we may start to see a trade off opportunity between those two things that contradict each other. And if we can identify where we can imply a trade off, it might help us solve the problem.
Another similar way to innovate a solution to a problem is to use Systematic Inventive Thinking. Instead of thinking outside of the box, we instead look inside the box. We limit our realm of possibilities, examine our closed world and use a systematic approach with our team to come up with new ideas, to solve problems. I cover Systematic Inventive Thinking in another podcast episode, which I’ll link to in the blog. The title of the podcast is, “Need to Innovate? Stop Brainstorming and Try a Systematic Approach.”
Covering all of this, what is today’s insight to action? If we have a problem and are looking to next steps, there are ways that we can systematize instead of just brainstorming.
We can use the nine windows approach, which will help us organize our thoughts when it comes to looking at the bigger system and the smaller microsystem. Or looking at our problem from the past and future tense. These are ways that we can visualize solutions to our problem that maybe we’re not seeing right away because we’re too deep into our problem.
And we can also think of some of the general rules of TRIZ, the theory of inventive problem solving, meaning that someone’s done it before. Someone’s done it before, even if it’s in a different industry and innovative solutions overcome a trade between two things that contradict each other. So we can look for things or features onse that we want for our product to solve our problem and look for contradictions as a way to maybe innovate a new solution to our problem.
Instead of looking outside the box for a solution, we can also look inside the box where we limit our scope of what we’re looking at and evaluate it in a systematic way in order to innovate a solution to a problem.
All of these things are ways that we can look at a problem and get a kickstart, or get some initial steps of what to do to be able to solve it.
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