
Eigenquestions: The Art of Framing Problems - arnon
https://coda.io/@shishir/eigenquestions-the-art-of-framing-problems
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Gunax

      You run a grocery store and you'd like to increase the frequency of customer visits, what do you do?
      
      You are designing a game to teach kids math in a fun way, where do you start?
    
      You'd like to shift your company's communication patterns from being primarily "synchronous" to primarily "asynchronous," what do you do?
    

Anyone want to cheat and give me their answers? Because I am not sure I really
grok it.

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zjs
I'll attempt at the second one: You are designing a game to teach kids math in
a fun way, where do you start?

First, I can brainstorm many questions:

• Is this a physical game or a computer game?

• Is this a solo game or a group activity?

• Is it a competition (with a winner and a loser) or a puzzle?

• Are we playing at school or at home?

• What kind of math are we learning?

• How old are the kids?

...

At this point, it feels like there may be a huge solution space. So I think
the next step is to step back and look for relationships between the
questions:

• There's a relationship between age and the kind of math.

• There's a relationship between physical vs. computer, home vs. school, solo
vs. group.

• There's a relationship between solo vs. group and puzzle vs. competition.

Based on this, I think maybe we can simplify a 6+ dimensional solution space
down to 2-3 dimensions:

1\. Let's call the x-axis "What grade level are we teaching?" From that, we
can make solid guesses about both age and what kind of math.

2\. Let's call the y-axis "How large of a group is the game for?" I think this
is the essence of the questions about where the game is being played, whether
it's a competition, whether it's a group activity, etc.

This gives us a framework to start mapping the solution space. Near the origin
of our graph (low grade level, small group) maybe we have a puzzle to teach
arithmetic. If we go up the y-axis (low grade level, large group), maybe we
have some sort of "math bingo" where the teacher shares basic arithmetic clues
and students mark the corresponding spot on their board. If we go out the
x-axis instead (high grade level, small group), maybe we create a math-heavy
card game to explore probabilities. If we go out to high grade level, large
group, maybe we need some sort of math-based scavenger hunt.

I don't think these specific ideas are actually very good, but I think the
process helps take a very open ended question and start to dissect it along a
couple of key dimensions to help focus on a more tractable problem; designing
one game that works for all of those scenarios would be hard.

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gmantg
Eigenquestion is a question that's when answered, turns into the same
question, but on a different scale.

~~~
nerdponx
From the article:

 _For a simplistic definition, the eigenquestion is the question where, if
answered, it likely answers the subsequent questions as well. Great framing
starts by searching for the most discriminating question of a set — the
eigenquestion._

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andi999
The explanation of 'eigenvector' is a bit unique (in the sense that I believe
it is absolute wrong).

~~~
ironSkillet
I agree that their explanation and association with eigenvectors is a bit of a
stretch... By describing it as "maximally discriminating" I think they're
trying to make an analogy with how PCA works - the eigenvector with largest
eigenvalue "encodes" more of the variance of your data than other vectors.

~~~
mswen
Agree they are using this context for eigenvector without going into detail.
Another way I have used PCA and/or cluster analysis as an analogy with a group
is to get them to put all the questions, product or service features, or
customer benefits on large sticky notes. Each person generates as many as come
to mind in a 5 to 10 minute period.

Then taking turns each person gets up and places a couple of the questions or
features they have generated on a wall or whiteboard, briefly explaining what
they mean while also placing it relatively near or far in conceptual space
from the items that are already up there.

As you get further along, you invite people to start reorganizing the sticky
notes talking about why they think some of these questions are more or less
similar to others. As they explain their reasoning you start hearing the
underlying latent dimensions, the organizing vectors.

When the process is all finished you have what looks like a cluster analysis.
Then as a group we name those clusters. This qualitative dimension reduction
exercise often has the result of getting a group of people talking about the
question or feature space in a common set of reduced labels and gives them a
common framework.

I found these techniques very enlightening to use with product groups as we
prepared to use research techniques to capture a Voice of the Customer.

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vsskanth
I really wanted to read this article. There seems to be some kind of scroll
jacking happening on mobile that makes it real frustating to swipe down. Page
keeps moving up and down due to some overlay. Can't even go into article mode
for this. Why dont developers test these things ?

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scraft
Perhaps this helps you
[http://gamesdev.com/temp/Screenshot_20200712_140535_org.mozi...](http://gamesdev.com/temp/Screenshot_20200712_140535_org.mozilla.firefox.jpg)
views okay for me, not sure if the image size will cause issues for you.

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vsskanth
Thanks for taking the time to make this screenshot but the resolution is so
low the text is unreadable

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scraft
I don't think it is: perhaps your browser or image view is struggling to
display such a large image. I say this as for me it displays identically to
how the website displays on my phone.

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Daub
Problems are an under-appreciated part of the creative process. When Nobel
prize winning scientists were asked what are the most valuable things for a
scientist to have, a good research question came out near the top.

