In 2016–2017, I wrote a series of short essays on Jianshu. Starting with a psychology textbook’s account of the factors that affect problem solving, I wanted to think through problem solving and design together. Ten years later, four of those essays have become pages you can play with: condensed text, each built around a few small experiments to drag, click, and calculate.
The same problem can become harder or easier depending on how it is presented.
Two kinds of “cache” that hide feasible solutions: mental set and functional fixedness.
How do you find a path through a possibility space that has no clear boundary—and keeps changing?
When several feasible solutions are in front of you, the hard part is choosing one.
Similarity, classification, and theory-laden observation.
Ask what it can do, not what it is. Work with behavioral data and let users set their own weights.
Test environments as counterfactual explorers, dual sensors, and Bayesian Safety.
The originals were notes made while reading and thinking. These adaptations preserve their arguments and voice while reducing the text to roughly 60% of its original length. The interactions have two sources. Figures in the first three essays are redrawn as interactive versions, with the originals shown alongside. Part 4 turns its two illustrations—the expanded rock-paper-scissors game from The Big Bang Theory and Fire Emblem’s weapon triangle—into examples in the preference explorer, without reproducing the images. Experiments and examples previously described only in words, such as the water jars, search tree, and real harbour-crossing routes, have been added here. Sources and estimated figures are identified on each page.
The original essays are also on this site, with English translations. Apart from a few typos corrected in 2026, their text is unchanged: The Problem Situation, Feasible Solutions, Open Problems, Choice and Optima.
Colors mean the same thing throughout: amber marks things you can manipulate, mint green marks answers, and red marks elimination or contradiction.