I think all this proves is that if you present people with a partial design that points in one direction, they’ll continue in that direction.
The experiment was run with two groups, both of which were given equal costs on addition – "Each piece that you add costs ten cents". There was also a group given a 'subtraction-cue' where the instructions mentioned that "removing pieces is free and costs nothing". Increase from 41% to 61% use of subtractive method.
There was a cost to addition, so the optimal solution for both groups was removal of the pillar.
For instance do I have to have a roof? Could I just balance the brick on the structure?
Can I remove the whole structure, put the roof on the floor next to the person, and just put the brick on that?
If not, Can the guy lie down to clear extra space so I can remove another layer?
Could I just have the guy lie down and surround him with one layer of bricks and then put the roof on that?
It’s not immediately obvious to me that all the above solutions would be allowed as an answer, because the question is to put a brick on “the structure”, so surely if I remove some of “the structure” then that’s hardly putting a brick on “the structure”, it’s putting a brick on “a structure”.
I assume by the time you have put the guy in effectively a coffin buried under a brick then someone would argue that the purpose of the structure is lost, but you could also argue that somewhat if you removed the roof height (a higher roof could be a feature).
Look at the last paragraph:
> policymakers and organizational leaders could explicitly solicit [...] proposals that reduce rather than add
Their conclusion is that people will add rather than take away, so you should tell people to take away. My conclusion is that people will add rather than take away if not provided enough information about the problem space. I think the solution is to better define the problem, otherwise you can come up with lots of proposals that aren’t suitable.
If I don’t know if making the guy lie down is allowed I’m going to have to make an assumption and either under-optimise or over-optimise.
My view is saying you can remove bricks implies that roof height isn’t important, which changes the users assumption on requirements. The learning should be more clarity on requirements, rather than just “ask people to reduce rather than increase”.
Additionally, if you changed the rule and said “participants will be scored based on the number of blocks removed”, I assume you would also get people creating silly scenarios like the ones I described and wholly unsuitable designs. This is more realistic in the real world where less material = less cost.
Also in personal experience as an engineer working with architects, suggestions to make radical alterations to the form of the structure are usually not well received...
It's not an unreasonable assumption to make. Like if you present someone with the sequence "1, 2, 3..." and ask them to continue it, they're going to say "4". It doesn't prove anything to say "Aha! The sequence was actually "1, 2, 3, 2, 1 behold your preference to add rather than subtract!"