MENTAL MODEL · M3537

Attribute Listing

SystemsmediumSystems Theory

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Updated 2026-08-05

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

A systematic ideation technique introduced by Robert Platt Crawford in the 1930s and popularized through creative-education literature. The object or problem is decomposed into attributes, commonly grouped as noun attributes such as parts and materials, adjective attributes such as qualities and colors, and verb attributes such as functions and movements. Each attribute is then varied by substitution, elimination, reversal, or exaggeration, and the resulting combinations are evaluated. The method's constraint is that it generates variations of an existing design rather than a new category, so it suits incremental improvement best.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Incremental Innovation Knife: split a stuck product into concrete attributes and change one at a time. - Variation Generator: apply substitute, remove, reverse, and exaggerate to each attribute in turn. - Assumption Surfacer: listing attributes exposes which features were never chosen, only inherited.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Free ideation stalls because people recall a product as a whole, and a whole offers no obvious handle to change. Decomposing it into attributes converts one vague question into many small, concrete ones, each with a defined space of alternatives. Because every modification is local, it is easy to imagine and easy to test, and pairing changed attributes produces options that pure recall would never reach. The structure supplies the search direction that unstructured brainstorming lacks.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Practice this model in one real situation:

Write the object or process at the top of a page. 2. List its noun, adjective, and verb attributes in three columns. 3. For each attribute, force at least one substitution, one deletion, and one reversal. 4. Combine the most promising changes into two or three concrete variants. 5. Screen the variants against cost, physics, and user need before prototyping.

Check to track your progress (stored locally)

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Source support: Explicit

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baike.so.comhttps://baike.so.com/doc/841643.htmlZH · Explicit
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