Why is it that we always look for a hammer whenever we need to drive a nail into a wall? In many cases, any heavy object would do the job, and yet we succumb to the need to use the most traditional tool to complete the task. This mental shortcut allows people to speedily solve recurring problems. However, it also prevents them from seeing alternate solutions to problems.

Definition: Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that drives people to use objects in traditional, standard ways.

Using physical objects only as they were originally intended is usually not a problem in everyday life: after all, if you already own a hammer, it would be rather wasteful to convene an ideation session to invent ways to drive the nail into the wall every time you want to hang a painting. However, when your job is to produce innovative design solutions, being stuck “inside the box” can be a tough hurdle.

Ruts Deepen Over Time

Not to be mean, but 5-year-olds are better at creative thinking than you. In the classic functional-fixedness experiment, participants are given a candle, a matchbook, and a box of tacks and are asked to affix the candle to a vertical surface so that it would be able to burn. Researchers found that adults and older children (6- and 7-year-olds) are significantly slower to use the tack box as a shelf for the candle compared to 5-year-olds. If the box was provided on its own, not as a container for the tacks, the time to reach the solution drastically decreased for the older children — indicating that the fixation on the containment function of the box was to blame. The 5-year-olds, however, were just as quick to solve the task when the box’s conventional function was demonstrated as when it was not — there was no advantage to presenting the box on its own.

When the containment function of a box is demonstrated, older children are significantly slower to use the box in an alternate function (as a support for a candle). 5-year-old children are immune to this functional-fixedness effect.

Overlooking alternate approaches and functions hinders our problem-solving capabilities. In the candle experiment, 5-year-olds were better at seeing alternative uses for objects, which affected how they viewed the overall problem and thus how they approached solving it. As we get older and gain more experience using objects, we lose this functional fluidity, and instead become fixated on their “proper” use.

Functional fixedness is a bias that strengthens over time. The more we’ve practiced a solution, the harder it is to see alternative ones. Sound familiar? I’m sure we all can remember a situation when we felt that the traditional solution was no longer effective, yet we were compelled to accept it because it’s “the way it’s always been done.”

Left: The typical function of a right-click on an image or link is to display a menu of actions to take on that object, or to see its properties. Additionally, downloading high-quality assets from a company is usually done via a Media or Press Kit page buried somewhere in the About section. Right: the Invision website has rejected this status quo: a right-click on their logo triggers a popup to download multiple formats of the logo.

Getting an outside, fresh perspective can often expose alternate ways to approach a task. This is a key reason we recommend ideating in a group and involving individuals from multiple disciplines: hearing others’ perspectives and ideas can jostle you away from fixating on any single solution.

Breaking Out of the Box

Other than getting a second opinion, how can we break out of these ruts and channel a 5-year-old’s way of thinking? As with many ailments, the first step to overcoming functional fixedness is acknowledging the problem. We must actively push ourselves to not judge ideas too early, and to consider a variety of alternate functions and perspectives. Ask: How else could this work? What are other approaches to solving this problem?

To see alternative, innovative solutions more easily, reframe the design problem. Abstracting the problem by removing the surface details minimizes the opportunities for functional fixedness and allows you to focus on the core issue. Once the problem is abstracted, it is easier to recognize related fields of expertise from which to draw inspiration. Research has found that when people look for inspiration from distant domains, they generate more creative solutions than when they consider only domains closely related to the original, non-abstracted representation of the problem.

For example, in a study run at Carnegie Mellon University, participants were asked to design a power strip in which large plugs wouldn’t block adjacent outlets. Researchers also created an abstracted version of this problem: How to fit objects of different sizes into a container so that they don’t block each other and take full advantage of the container’s capacity? In this reframed problem, the surface features of power strips, plugs, and outlets were stripped away to avoid functional fixedness. When given the abstracted problem, participants in the study were able to identify remotely related, yet potentially relevant domains of expertise such as contortionism, landscaping, carpentry, and Japanese aesthetics. People who collected inspiration from these distant-yet-structurally-relevant domains produced the most novel, practical solutions to the original design problem, proving that creativity increases when functional fixedness is prevented.

Similarly, whenever you are faced with a design problem, resist the urge to immediately jump into brainstorming solutions. Instead, abstract the problem and identify potentially related sources of inspiration. (Tip: After you’ve abstracted the problem, take a break so you can allow yourself to “forget” the original formulation.) Then, consider how the problem is solved in these outside fields, and how those solutions could be translated back into your design.

Conclusion

Cognitive biases such as functional fixedness keep designers from seeing the full range of solutions to a problem and affect the ideas that are generated and considered. The inability to recognize alternative approaches and uses of elements constrains creativity, and thus limits ideation and problem solving.

Here’s a three-step method to avoid functional fixedness:

  1. Abstract the problem: distill the problem down to the basics, eliminating any surface details.
  2. Identify alternative fields of expertise that could help solve the problem.
  3. Draw inspiration from these distant domains in order to apply outside-the-box concepts to solve the original design problem. At this stage, no concept is too crazy: employ the ideation technique of delaying judgment and branch out as far as possible to generate creative potential solutions.

We can also strive to think innovatively and use our imaginations more in our everyday lives. Practice overcoming functional fixedness whenever possible: Use a thin coin to tighten a screw instead of reaching for a screwdriver; open a package with your car key instead of a box cutter; or think like The Little Mermaid and make a hair comb out of a fork! The more often you push yourself to think divergently and see novel uses for old objects, the easier it will become.

Practice thinking outside-the-box and learn more tips to cultivate creative ideas in our Effective Ideation Techniques full-day training course.

References:

German, T. P., and Defeyter, M. (2000). Immunity to Functional Fixedness in Young Children. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7(4), 707-712.

Yu, L., Kittur, A., and Kraut, R. (2016). Encouraging “Outside-the-box” Thinking in Crowd Innovation Through Identifying Domains of Expertise. Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 1214-1222