Many of us probably had some trouble solving the word problem in chapter 12 this week, one possible cause of this was a term we learned just before being introduced to the problems, functional fixedness. Functional fixedness is the inability to use an object as anything other than its initial purpose. For example, it might be difficult to reach something off the top shelf when we only have a chair and want a ladder. What some might not realize is that they can climb on top of the chair having the same effect as a ladder. As we have seen functional fixedness can have effects on your daily life but can it have effects on problems that are even more complicated? Functional Fixedness Stops You From Having Innovative Ideas explains how functional fixedness might be more detrimental than we thought. Yet it isn’t all bad, this fixedness acts as a short cut to solve problems we’ve faced before and solve them faster. (Harpley, 2017) This same short cut is what prevents us from making new ways to solve the same problem. Why would we create a new way to get something off the top shelf if we already know a ladder can solve that problem? A five-year-old hasn’t had time to learn this short cut, so their ability to innovate would be better than an adult much to their demise. While I was attempting to solve the tower of Hanoi problem I had initially moved on after only making three moves since I couldn’t figure out what to do from there. I had created this image in my head that a small piece could only go on top of the medium piece but once I realized I could put it on the large piece and freed a space for the medium piece, I was able to progress with the problem and eventually solve it. Having an idea of an object set in stone can be very taxing on how we solve problems. If you are in a position where you have to come up with innovative ideas to solve old problems in new ways, practicing these problems are the way to go. It’s a muscle we didn’t even know we could exercise.

Works Cited

Harpley, A. (2017, July 30). Functional Fixedness Stops you From Having Innovative Ideas. Retrieved from Nielsen Norman Group: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/functional-fixedness/