💭 Beware the Trap of “Premature Closure“ 💭

How often do we feel the rush to jump to a specific solution? It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially under the pressure of deadlines and the fear of looking like we don’t have the answers. Our society has historically rewarded us for knowing the answers and punished us for challenging the status quo or simply wondering.

But as Prof. B. Roth of Stanford University highlighted back in 1973, this approach often leads to solving symptoms rather than addressing the root cause—and ultimately results in suboptimal solutions, thus waste of resources.

Prof. Roth referred to this phenomenon as “premature closure”—an urge to settle on a solution before thoroughly exploring the problem. In his lecture to engineering students at the University of the Negev, he emphasized that successful designers invest time in understanding the problem and exploring alternative approaches. He advocated for using a structured “design process” as a series of guiding steps to help us avoid falling into this trap.

Source: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57c6b79629687fde090a0fdd/t/590133396a4963a462c680cd/1493250903831/Design+Process+and+Creativity+B+Roth+Small.pdf