Active thinking is about

• passionately caring about and being involved with a cause, and

• changing the problem in order to explore it.

STRIDES Problem Solving Model

Prototyping can help you tackle problems when you don't have the answers. "When the project is especially complex, prototyping is a way of making progress when the challenges seem insurmountable. Focused prototyping helps resolve little critical problems one by one. Once you get in gear, you'll be surprised at how easily some of the solutions appear," writes Tom Kelly⁵ from IDEO.

 Case in Point  Gaudi

Gaudy was a world-famous architect who astonished the world with creations that seemed to be made from whipped cream instead of concrete and stone. Gaudi was very fond of nature and nature inspired his work very much. Natural shapes have proven to be effective and tightly linked to efficient structures. But Gaudi had a weakness: he was a poor mathematician. Yet he wanted to make optimal use of the material in order to be able to transform the freakish and surprisingly fantastical shapes in his head into buildings that could survive weather and storms. So he found the way that uses some physical properties instead of math to minimize the shearing forces which are the causes of collapses.

One of the shapes he loved was the catenary or chain-line. Chains have a high resistance to an extension force, but no resistance to a shearing force. Being a weak mathematician, Gaudi couldn't make proper calculations. So, what did he do? He developed simple prototypes. How? He dip a chain into plaster, hang it to dry and then... simply put it upside down.

 Case in Point  An Inventive Clerk

A clerk had to calculate the area of some complex shapes. Since he was not a master in Math, he faced two problems. Firstly, he couldn't "fetch" the data into polynomials and secondly, he hadn't mastered the art of Integral Calculus. But he was inventive. What he did was draw the data on calibrated 100 gram paper and then cut out the graph and... weighted it.⁶