by Jaime Medina Independent Software Engineer, Consultant & Creative Technologist
Visual thinking is a powerful tool for discovering new and unique solutions to complex engineering problems. On the one hand, this seems to be intrinsically understood. We often say ‘let’s think out of the box on this one' or ‘we need to think creatively here’. On the other hand, the discipline of engineering tends to rely on reductionistic approaches in the fear of not reinventing the wheel or to leverage an existing strategy. However, as technologies emerge, so do new challenges. Often, the cookie-cutter approach does not lead to the most efficient solution. It is useful to take a look at a wide range of disciplines to see what light they might shed on these types of problems.
In the 1940's Gestalt theorist Max Wertheimer, in his book Productive Thinking, drew a sharp distinction between productive and reproductive thinking. For Wertheimer it was clear that some thinking processes were far more effective than others – particularly when confronted with a new or novel problem. As a friend of Albert Einstein, Wertheimer became fascinated with Einstein's use of visual thinking and thought experiments as a key problem solving technique. Einstein always had credited his imagination (when as a boy of 16 he wondered what it would be like to chase a ray of light) as a primary impetus for developing his theory of special relativity.
Wertheimer himself conducted numerous experiments investigating both the limitations of rote problem solving methodologies and the opportunities that visual thinking had to offer. Through these experiments, he examined the use of rule-based approaches to problem solving and then pushed the boundaries of these rules to the point of failure. The calculation of the area of a parallelogram by children is a good example of this.
10 | Rhode Island Creative Magazine
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