Complex Problems – The Onion
Many problems that we face in our day-to-day work as designers or product owners are complex in nature. As product owners, product custodians and designers, we are expected to solve these complex problems. Let us have a look at the characteristics of a complex problem.
The complex problems are such that they look straightforward or easy to solve on their face value. However, they may be too deep to gauge in the first go. Some complex problems by nature, may just be too broad to be solved in one go. While some others may both be deep as well as broad.
For example, business wants to improve traffic for their website. Or, they want a heavy traffic on website to convert into buyers. These problems may sound easy to solve. Whereas, actually, to improve traffic on a website or to improve the conversion rate of the incoming traffic on a website may warrant the business to do a lot more than floating offers, or just have a digital marketing strategy.
Most often than not these problems may need several rounds of solution. In other words, the business involved may need thoroughly think a solution, implement it and then look at the results before closing the case. It may so happen that the business may need to deploy another set of solution based on their observation.
Let’s look at another problem example, which is simple yet broad in nature. Such an example could be developing a feature where you want your users to be able to select a range of objects from inside a category and then buy them. The problem here may seem simple. However, when you sit down to think over the various designs for such a problem, you realize various cases such as the following:
What happens if the user selects a parent checkbox at the category level?
What happens to the category level checkbox, when the user un-select some of the objects in the list before proceeding?
What should happen to the category level selection if the user edits the list just before making the payment?
What should we show the user on the confirmation page? Should it be the list of objects or just the category name?
What should be the edit behavior when the user has selected a few categories and a few other items from other categories?
The real Problem, almost always is hidden under layers. When you solve all the problems that are visible in the first gauge, you may discover a new set of problems. A good designer or a product owner should be able to look farther and look deeper into the problems. However, sometimes these problems can only be solved when you remove the first layer of the problem or in other words, solve it. The nature of such problems is therefore be like an onion. Layers after layers of problems revealing itself after every peel of solution.
How do we approach a complex problem – The Cake
The Question remains as to how we approach to solve such a problem.
As we discussed earlier, we need to solve one bit at a time. Well! There is a key to it though. While you try to formulate a solution to the problem, you must think through all aspects of that layer of the problem. If a part of the problem is not thought well or left out in the solution or ideation process, then it may turn out to be costly in the overall scheme of things.
A good analogy is when you may be tasked to eat the whole cake. The key here is to take a small bite each time and while you cut a piece, cut through the layers so that the taste is maintained. If the bite does not cut through all the layers of the cake, the next bite may be imbalanced in how it tastes, if not awful. Technically speaking, there are many ways of solving such problems for example, forming a matured team with varied skills and applying an agile methodology through the problem-solving process can ensure you have the right-sized bite to eat in quick intervals. Deploying systems thinking to problem solving can help you ensure that you cut through all layers of the cake while you cut the bite.
So, here you go! While life throws onion, eat cake!
But how to ensure we cut the cake through all layers? We can save this discussion for another day.
Till then, have some food for thought. Find some complex problems to solve.