Objects as knowledge: A case study of outsight

What I read

In this article, the authors explore the way people solve problems by interacting with things, as compared to just thinking about a solution. Through a verbal protocol, they illustrate an account of someone finding a solution, but recognizing it only in “outsight”—the sudden spark (typically an “insight”) that occurs after the problem has been solved.

First, the authors describe, through the metaphor of a soccer play, how the ball acts as a part of the game; while it doesn’t have agency, it has impact on the way players interact, and on the outcome of the game. They indicate that the ball has “agentic consequences.” This is the basis of the exploration in the paper—the way the ball (or other objects) influence problem solving in a constructed, but still cognitive, way.

The authors reference previous studies that attempted to empirically measure where new ideas come from, often using matchsticks in a presentation and equations that, on the surface, appear impossible. These equations have a “riddle” approach intended to “stump” participants, and the participants then need to solve the riddle by thinking in non-traditional ways (for example, deconstructing and shifting the operator, rather than the actual values.) As these are presented in a static format, the participants work in their heads, and often struggle or fail. Some who solve the problem use an analytical approach, but the researchers often focus on the “insight” drive solution, where a participant works through three stages of suddenness, preceded by an analytical strategy, leading to joy and relief. The authors call this approach “hermetic” since it cannot “spill out into the environment.”

Next, they discuss how in art and design, potential solutions are externalized through prototypes and sketches, and these often lead to further iterations. Researchers have resisted this, and have treated the way problems are solved as though “humans have thoughts, agency, intentionality, while objects don’t.” This research study takes the opposite approach or philosophy, by presenting the matchsticks as movable objects (digital objects, on the screen, but in a draggable format.) They describe the study in detail: participants are given several of the matchstick problems, and are asked to think out loud as they interact with them. Some participants are reluctant to engage with moving the sticks “physically.” This article focuses on the verbal protocol of a participant who moved them directly. In analyzing the verbal transcript, they focus on what they have (previously) defined as an “outsight”, which is a spark of recognition after something surprising and pleasing (and “solving”) has occurred.

They describe the method in more detail, and then describe the results of the one example participant. They show that the participant struggles with the problems, eventually realizing that she can move parts of the equal sign or plus sign, sees that she has moved them correctly, and expresses surprise that the solution was achieved.

The authors discuss the implications of the research: that the participant “discovered the solution to each of the three problems, but not easily, and never through mental simulation… the solution was constructed through a systemic, human/non human interaction. The new idea that led to the solution was discovered in the world, not in the participant’s head.” They point at several moments in the transcript where the participant makes moves with the matchsticks, but “has no clear idea of the consequences of doing so… her approach was quasi-strategic but she never predicts specifically what the outcome of the exploration might yield.”

They conclude that this experiment provides a “clear view of how a new idea develops and reveals the restructuring process that evinced it.” Their eventual larger conclusion is that problem solving research needs to account for the role of objects in the nature of actually solving a problem.

What I learned and what I think

I dislike nearly everything about this paper, and similar to some of the ones I read earlier in this experimental read-scholarly-things-every-day activity, I found myself getting viscerally angry at the text. I yelled at it.

The paper tests a gimmick. Moving matchsticks around may or may not be a useful endeavor and it seems like it’s considered in cognitive psychology to having some value; whatever, not my primary issue. My problem is that these little riddles aren’t about any form of problem solving—they are about being cute and clever. The main participant highlighted here solves nothing; she simply works through nearly random trial and error until she happens on the punchline. If we’re equating arbitrary screwing around in the context of a clever joke with solving a problem in real life, then we’ve arrived at such a defeatist result that we should all just give up. I’ll take the minor contribution or point that objects in the world are relevant, and that point was made on the first page with the soccer metaphor. The rest of this is a blog post at best, or just a funny conversation in the lab; it’s something an eight year old does with their friend. Randomness plays a role in everything, but that’s not how problem solving in design works, and it’s not how art works, either. They are touching on the smallest part of playfulness, but it’s almost like they’ve never actually seen real work being done.

I’m throwing a lot of stones here with no substantiation, so maybe it’s more useful for me to think about how to improve this, and the way I would improve it is to study creativity in-situ, but not in some sort of reductive way. Fine, we’ll use matchsticks? Dump a bunch of matchsticks on the table and ask someone to do something, and see what happens. More interested in understanding how people solve problems? Give them an actual problem to solve, one that doesn’t have some sort of gotcha solution, and offer the sticks as a material. You need to fix a squeaky door. You need to create something magical. You need to pick your teeth. Whatever.

I think my frustration comes from how such an important topic as creativity is treated so cavalierly by researchers that are respectable and scholarly. They clearly know that designers iterate through prototyping, and clearly understand that there's a back and forth between an object or material in the world and the people using it. I selected this article because an article that I really appreciated by Glăveanu cited it. He’s the Managing Editor of the journal that published this. The journal describes that “Its main themes are creativity, imagination, innovation, agency, improvisation, serendipity, wonder, counterfactual thinking, pretend play, the future, anticipation, utopia / dystopia and social and technological change.” These are great themes. This does not contribute knowledge in support of those themes.