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Problem Solving and Decision Making in

Software Development

Linda Rising linda@lindarising.org www.lindarising.org

@RisingLinda

Disclaimer: This provocative presentation is ideally the beginning of a conversation. It won't take long for me to tell you everything I know about cognitive psychology, although I have been reading in the area for several years now. I'm an amateur who has sufficient interest in weird topics and a strange way of connecting ideas that might or might not be of interest to you. Thank you for your tolerance and understanding of my meanderings and I hope you learn a little that might help you in your life. This is not an “academic” presentation, but those interested in more information are invited to ask me for references for any part of this talk and I will be happy to make them available. Scientists and journals prefer positive findings and bury negative studies. Always be a little skeptical!

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What is thinking?

Thinking or decision-making here? h

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Similarities in the two settings?

Sitting Long periods of focused attention without a

break Inside – no connection with Nature, no natural

light Drab, probably noisy surroundings Tired, over-caffeinated individuals

My goal: useful tips

Cognitive science is fast growing, uses controlled experiments, on-going re-testing, explosion in results

Our field is slow growing, few, if any controlled experiments (mostly anecdotes, case studies)

We should pay attention – it might help us do our work better J!

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Move! Blink, move your eyes from side to side, turn your

head from side to side Look at the horizon, look around, look outside Stand up, lie down Walk – even 5 minutes Walking is an effective persuasion technique Walk sideways or backward I've walked myself into my best thoughts.

Kierkegaard

Sitting is the new smoking 6 hours of sitting cancels 1 hour of exercise Hours of sitting correlated with earlier demise

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Walking improves memory

Researchers asked some subjects to study a famous painting by walking back and forth in front of it. Results showed that these walkers remembered more about the painting than those subjects who sat still in front of it and “paid attention” to it. James Zull, The Art of Changing the Brain, 143

Treadmill Desk

Videos\Ergotron.flv

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Standing/Walking Meetings Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, CA-based health plan “We actually do have walking meetings at Kaiser

Permanente, believe it or not. My team is pretty productive, so it must be working.” Ray Baxter

Recent study of stand-up meetings shows they took 34%

less time and produced equally good decisions. Not all meetings should be stand ups!

Salo walking meeting – financial services company in Minneapolis

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Conductors vs. drivers n  Conductors on London’s double-decker

buses experienced less than half the incidence of coronary heart disease as sedentary bus drivers.

n  Only altered by very vigorous levels of leisure exercise.

Jeremy Morris studies from 1950s to 1980s

From the cognitive scientists The brain is built to detect and respond to change. Research suggests prolonged attention to a single task hinders performance.

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Take a Short Break

Bio break, coffee break, smokers’ edge J! 10 min break after learning improves memory. Distraction before decision = better results. Slow

down the decision-making process (especially in tense situations with a lot of aggression).

Work on a different problem But use a different kind of mental activity. Don’t simply switch to a similar kind of project. Aim to work in a completely different way. For developers, try switching from coding to design.

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“I thought of that while riding my bicycle.” ― Albert Einstein

Nap Rooms! When Arianna Huffington (chair, president, editor-in-chief of

Huffington Post Media Group, nationally syndicated columnist, author of thirteen books) is looking for inspiration, she goes to sleep. “There are many, many great ideas locked inside of us. We just need to close our eyes to see them.”

Nap rooms in Huffington Post Media Group. Strong correlation between lack of sleep and sperm quality

and quantity. NASA study on naps and caffeine!

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Nationwide Planning Associates – Rejuvenation Center

Ostrich Pillow

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The Ultimatum Game In pairs of subjects, Player A is given money (e.g.

$10) and makes an offer to Player B. If B accepts, both keep their money. If B rejects, both get nothing.

Typically low offers (e.g. $2) are rejected. Research shows that if players take a 10-min

break, low offers are accepted, so Take Ten! Counting helps, counting backward even better!

Do “Nothing” Compared with engaging in a demanding task, rest,

or no break, engaging in an undemanding task, e.g. walking the dog, playing with your children, fixing a snack, led to substantial improvement in performance on previously encountered problems.

Processing a barrage of information leaves us too fatigued to learn.

The brain gets tired and needs a break. Take a “brain break” J!

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Search Inside Yourself

The idea here is to have a lot of these micro mental rest breaks. This doesn’t require you to give up anything. You don’t have to stop working and go to a meditation room for an hour. You can take a micro break between tasks, when you are walking to the restroom, or at the beginning of every activity. You can get some benefits of meditation for practically zero cost. Chade-Meng Tan. His new book has the same title as the name of the program he has taught at Google since 2007, one of the hundreds of free classes available for employees.

Drink, Eat Even mild dehydration affects the brain – always

have water on hand – watch the caffeine. Decision-making requires energy, if tired and

hungry people are forced to make decisions, they look for the easy way out.

Study of judges granting more favorable verdict after breaks.

Negotiators reach more favorable results while eating.

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Pixar’s Cereal Bar J!

Which System? System 1: Unconscious (not Freud’s), fast,

intuitive, can multi-task, knows everything, but is inaccessible

System 2: Conscious mind, slow, rational, linear, forgetful, chatters constantly while awake

Slow thinking down to use System 2 Distract System 2 to listen to System 1 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

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Resilient combination The “combination of fast and slow components makes the system resilient, along with the way the differently paced parts affect each other. Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous… Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power. All durable dynamic systems have this sort of structure; it is what makes them adaptable and robust.” Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now

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Multi-tasking? Sorry L! The conscious mind cannot multi-task but

must context switch as does any linear processor

Heavy multi-taskers have been shown to have no beneficial abilities and to be suckers for irrelevancy

Bottom line: multi-tasking is bad, sorry L!

Look up!

Only 25% looked both ways 1/3 listen to music, text, on the phone Texting pedestrians ~4 times more likely to cross against the light, fail to look both ways. Those listening to music walked more quickly but less likely to look both ways before crossing. Distracted behavior helps account for accidents that injure more than 60,000 per year and kill more than 4,000 in the US alone.

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Nature Nurtures Plants (must be the real thing, not photos

or displays) improve innovative and creative thinking

Looking outside improves health Walking outside, even for a few minutes,

improves decision-making (better than walking in urban areas) by restoring ability to focus

Cardboard consultant Explain the problem out loud to something

or someone else – a stuffed animal, a photo, or another person who does not have to understand what you are talking about J!

Use this technique in meetings – have proposers of different solutions explain their version of the problem (not the solution!) to others

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Write, Draw, Sketch Typing is the least effective means for

description Writing by hand is useful for solving

problems of all kinds Drawing, sketching are also helpful –

research shows that doodlers remember more information than note-takers – encourage doodling at meetings!

Mind Maps

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Write it down! You forget 50% of what you hear in about

4 hours, so write it down. J.B. Rainsberger, “Get stuff out of your

head, now!” www.jbrains.ca/permalink/get-stuff-out-of-your-head-now

Paper better than e-docs? New research suggests that learning is enhanced by reading print on paper. May be a speed advantage? Print readers seem to know material sooner, but e-readers do catch up. Stay tuned on this… It might be that different media are good for different kinds of learning and require different learning techniques…

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Happy people are more productive The visual cortex of happier people takes in more

information so they "see" more and as a result have more insight

Posture – sit up, both feet on the floor, arms open, pull work toward you, nod your head (slouching makes you sad)

Language – choose affirming words “like,” “positive,” find areas of agreement, “yes, and”

Smile – research shows this to be as effective as anti-depressants J! Fake it!

Smile J!

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Amy Cuddy - HBS

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Body changes brain 2 minutes in high-power or low-power pose n  86% vs. 60% choose to take risk

n  Testosterone 20% increase vs. 10% decrease

n  Cortisol: 25% decrease vs. 15%

increase

Fake it ‘till you become it!

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The Art of Possibility Author and musician Benjamin Zander His reaction to mistakes J! ..\Videos\How Fascinating! Que fascinante! - YouTube.flv

Architecture has Cognitive Consequences

Hard vs. soft chair or weight of a document influences how “hard” or “weighty” we believe an issue to be

Information in black & white makes us more judgmental (right or wrong, no “gray” area)

Temperature of room or drinks influences how we feel about others around us.

Higher ceilings increases innovation. Lower ceiling concentrates on details.

Noisy environments are harmful. Music we like is more distracting than music we don’t like! Fast, loud music interferes most with comprehension.

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Art spurs innovation

But don’t use Einstein!

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Brainstorming Brainstorming “invented” in the 1940s – is

intuitively appealing – we all get together and follow some simple rules to generate innovative ideas

Research shows that individuals working on their own produce a higher quantity/quality of ideas than those in groups and avoids “social loafing” and “groupthink”

Stressed people tend to conform more to social opinion.

Solomon Asch Experiment

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Groupthink—use Champion Skeptic

Getting a lot of smart people in the room is no insurance against Groupthink.

J.F.K.’s Bay of Pigs fiasco is the classic example. After this, Kennedy appointed his brother Devil’s Advocate—to function like a good lawyer requiring group members to examine carefully the pros and cons of policy alternatives before they agree upon the best course of action.

More effective than brainstorming

Quiet storming after preparation Independence is a requirement for

individual action

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Distance decisions Imagine you are solving a problem or making a

decision for someone else. Imagining you are far away from the issue leads to

more rational reactions and decisions. We are better at estimating others’ health risks! Andy Grove (Intel CEO) asked Gordon Moore

(COO), “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?”

Effort is not importance We equate time spent on a decision to difficulty,

which translates to importance, which leads to even more time spent deciding.

Researchers call this “decision quicksand.” Create decision-making rules and stick with it Sample rules: n  Timebox, e.g. allow 5 minutes n  Delegate, e.g. let a friend pick the movie n  Taking a break allows more rationality

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Diversity! Have more women on the team or involved

somehow. Research shows higher quality

collaboration, changes the behavior of the male members, increases group intelligence and overall performance.

http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/

Do Food…together Everyone had lunch, tea, coffee together, they spent a lot of time

talking and I wondered how anyone was getting any work done! But the conversations were not about the latest movie—they were always talking about science, suggesting ideas for experiments, sharing ideas, critiquing, giving feedback.

Now we eat lunch in our offices alone, doing e-mail. IMHO, this is a lousy way of doing science. You can't learn anything by doing e-mail.

At the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, 2009 chemistry laureate Thomas Steitz recalled the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge in the 1960s.

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Closer = more innovation n  Recent Harvard study shows that

collaborators working within 10 km of each other produced more innovative ideas.

n  Researchers suggest: frequent, spontaneous, “real” as opposed to virtual interactions lead to more innovation.

n  ALL communication diminishes as distance increases.

Mental Contrasting Write 3 benefits of succeeding and the 3 main

obstacles. Alternate, starting with the benefits. Works best when morale is high with

expectations of success. If you're feeling low and struggling to get going,

this is not for you.

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Animals! Research shows dogs in

the workplace result in better collaboration within teams.

I now get to validate the information you sent me on Dogs and Development. I moved to Google as a Technical Advisor about 9 months ago and I am able to bring my dogs to work! It is really fun to see the different breeds on campus. My role is very interesting and I am leading software patent projects and innovation initiatives. Keep in touch! Kevin Brune, Google

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See the world differently J!

Menlo Innovations menloinnovations.com/ Software design and

development should be a joyful experience.

To achieve this joy, we have changed everything.

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Thinking Tips Summary

Move Take a break Sleep Eat/drink (no energy drinks) Nature Animals

Try your own experiments From Fearless Change: n  Test the waters n  Time for Reflection n  Small Success n  Step by Step Thanks for listening!