I'll attempt at the second one: You are designing a game to teach kids math in a fun way, where do you start? First, I can brainstorm many questions: • Is thi

I'll attempt at the second one: You are designing a game to teach kids math in a fun way, where do you start? First, I can brainstorm many questions: • Is this a physical game or a computer game? • Is this a solo game or a group activity? • Is it a competition (with a winner and a loser) or a puzzle? • Are we playing at school or at home? • What kind of math are we learning? • How old are the kids? ... At this point, it feels like there may be a huge solution space. So I think the next step is to step back and look for relationships between the questions: • There's a relationship between age and the kind of math. • There's a relationship between physical vs. computer, home vs. school, solo vs. group. • There's a relationship between solo vs. group and puzzle vs. competition. Based on this, I think maybe we can simplify a 6+ dimensional solution space down to 2-3 dimensions: 1. Let's call the x-axis "What grade level are we teaching?" From that, we can make solid guesses about both age and what kind of math. 2. Let's call the y-axis "How large of a group is the game for?" I think this is the essence of the questions about where the game is being played, whether it's a competition, whether it's a group activity, etc. This gives us a framework to start mapping the solution space. Near the origin of our graph (low grade level, small group) maybe we have a puzzle to teach arithmetic. If we go up the y-axis (low grade level, large group), maybe we have some sort of "math bingo" where the teacher shares basic arithmetic clues and students mark the corresponding spot on their board. If we go out the x-axis instead (high grade level, small group), maybe we create a math-heavy card game to explore probabilities. If we go out to high grade level, large group, maybe we need some sort of math-based scavenger hunt. I don't think these specific ideas are actually very good, but I think the process helps take a very open ended question and start to dissect it along a couple of key dimensions to help focus on a more tractable problem; designing one game that works for all of those scenarios would be hard.