More specific and more general is a creative ideation method which designers use to get new perspectives on projects. By shifting their view from an abstract, general concept to a more specific item—with constraints to define it—and vice versa, they can gain vital insights to consider their design problems in new ways.
“It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five problems one way.”
— George Pólya, Mathematician noted for contributions to number theory, probability theory and more
It’s easy to get stuck on a design project. If you’re thinking about a general/abstract concept—such as designing an ecommerce platform—you might struggle to consider everything you’d need for the platform to work with various types of webshops. However, you can force yourself to get fresh angles on your project when you shrink your design space to focus on something concrete by adding a constraint (e.g., pretending it’s now a bookselling platform). Suddenly, you’ve gone from a hazy view of a platform to a well-defined one where you’d consider more definite design choices, such as:
A library-style search function.
A filter for subjects/genres.
A featured section on new/popular releases.
Now, going back through this list of items that are relevant just for a bookstore, you remove the specific bookstore references (so you’ve got a search function, a filter, etc.). These generic functionalities could apply to any type of webshop. However, if you substitute in another type of webshop (e.g., one selling kitchen appliances/parts), you could explore what would be relevant there. From that, you’d see which functionalities work for different webshops (e.g., search filters) and those that only appear for niche products (e.g., filters for energy-saving ratings).
This design creativity technique helps you explore your design space progressively in two directions. So, for example, imagine you actually were tasked with designing a bookselling platform. You might struggle to design a high-powered filter that helps users find book titles from one search box—instead of having to use several to filter the topic, author’s name, approximate year published, etc. Then, you’d need to stretch to get some inspiration for the way ahead. So, you’d step back and seek a big-picture view of search boxes/filters generally. Then, you could get specific again, adding constraints (e.g., the platform’s only usable on mobile devices). Eventually, you might cover every possible way of envisioning your platform and maybe create a highly useful and original product.
If you have an open design problem and need to get a more concrete overview and go in a more specific direction, try these steps:
Choose a specific type of the item you’ve got in mind (e.g., a bookselling webshop) and consider how you’d design it and which design choices it’d need to be successful.
List all of its functionalities – e.g., library-style search function.
Revise the lists to remove the industry-specific references you made in step 2, so you end up with generic ones.
Repeat the exercise with different types of industries/businesses until you’ve got a long list of functionalities that could all work for your design.
Reorder the list according to priority – Functionalities that show up twice or more for different webshops (e.g., “Search”) are more important ones.
If you have a specific and concrete design problem, try these steps to get some distance and gain a creative edge (Note: You probably won’t get a finished solution from this; it’s more to help you work your way towards something you can fine-tune):
Step back and consider the problem more abstractly. Consider different ways to design (e.g.) search boxes instead of just ones to use for a bookstore.
Consider solutions in totally different design spaces – e.g., other types of stores (e.g., kitchen appliances) or even suitable physical objects (e.g., relevant things you find around your home/office).
List the functionality of each item you find (e.g., a coffee filter) and what makes it work – E.g., coffee filters strain coffee-infused water for drinking and trap grounds for discarding.
Make the functionality you’ve described for the item more abstract – E.g., a coffee filter first mixes the relevant components and, second, filters out the relevant content.)
Try to apply this functionality to your design project – Consider how you’d create a filter/search box that has two steps. Would it be to (1) mix the relevant components and (2) filter out a relevant mix?
Tips
Try this technique in a group and see if you can create mockups or act out aspects of your idea (e.g., a service).
Thinking concretely forces you to notice details, so be sure to note all the aspects of your idea that work—and which don’t.
Overall, try to follow your imagination wherever it goes and note all the features it gives you from various new views of your design problem.
Take our Creativity course, Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services
Read this Scientific American article for further insights An Easy Way to Increase Creativity
This technique works best for design and creative problems that feel too vague—or conversely, too narrowly defined. If a problem feels abstract, stepping toward concrete examples helps to spark insight. If a design feels too specific, widening to a general perspective helps you spot patterns or better structures.
For example, when crafting a generic shop design, imagining one for a pet or food shop makes details clearer. If you are designing a food‑shop layout, abstracting to a broader category layout or library model can reset your thinking. This method suits UX flows, information architecture, creative constraints, and unfamiliar domains—any situation where shifting between narrow and wide perspectives can uncover new solutions.
Investigate design thinking for helpful points about how to iterate your way towards better prototypes and design solutions.
This method stems from heuristics in problem solving, especially the idea by George Pólya of moving between concrete and abstract thought. Thinking more specific and then general, or vice versa, unlocks creativity and clarity. When you narrow a task, such as designing for pet shops, details surface. Stepping back to general, like layout categories, lets patterns emerge.
Constraints often free your mind rather than limit it, by directing imagination, for instance, limiting to older phones or assuming poor user memory. Considering extreme cases, such as a thousand‑item menu, forces radically different designs to come into focus. That interplay between specifics and general principles builds solutions that work deeper than one‑off examples.
Speaking of extremes, explore how the worst possible idea can help with design ideation.
Begin with your general idea, like designing an interface for unspecified shops. Then pick a concrete example, maybe a pet shop or grocery store, and flesh out its details. Sketch the product info, layout, filters, navigation, or categories. That concreteness lets you test usability and surface hidden challenges.
Once you have explored specifics, step back and generalize: what patterns, structures, or principles hold regardless of shop type? You might see underlying needs—like product categories, search filters, or hierarchy—that generalize. Use that insight to refine a broader, more flexible design. Then you can repeat: choose another concrete example, test, and re-generalize. This oscillation helps deepen your understanding and produces stronger, adaptable designs.
Explore other brainstorming approaches to see if and how they might also help stoke the creative design engine.
When you start with a specific idea, such as designing a food‑shop interface, identify challenges. Maybe categories like fresh food, canned goods, and household items feel awkward? If so, step back and ask: Is this about general category layout, akin to a library system? That abstraction helps you experiment with classification models, alphabetical bins, or hierarchical filters. Then return to the specific food‑store context and see which pattern fits best. You might realize that grouping by type (such as fresh vs. non-perishable) works better than listing everything sequentially. That shift helps you discover more robust layouts. And the process makes your design more thoughtful by first generalizing concepts, then reapplying them to solve specific usability or navigation problems.
Discover another avenue on the subject of using categories to find ideas, in the multiple classifications technique.
A simple example could be menu design. You start with a concrete menu of twelve items that does not fit on screen. So, you try shrinking the font—but that fails. You then imagine a thousand-item menu—that is extreme, and it forces you to design a radically different interface, like alphabetical buckets or scrolling subsections—much like a library index.
After exploring that, you return to the real case of around twelve items. Many of the wholesale layout ideas, from buckets or grouped items, remain useful. This concrete-to-general-to-specific shift expands your design thinking, frees you from current constraints, and delivers clearer and more flexible solutions—even for smaller cases.
Peer at how to empower your perspective on design problems and much more in our article The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process.
Yes, you can, and each iteration deepens your insights. You might start with a general goal, choose a specific scenario to sketch, then abstract again to integrate insights. Then you pick another concrete example, like a different store type or user context, and repeat the cycle.
Each round surfaces new interactions, constraints, or structures; alternating between specificity and generality sharpens detailed usability and systemic thinking. It keeps your creativity fresh and grounded, so repeat as you need to until your design feels imaginative and applicable across contexts.
Explore what various forms of thinking might do for your designs in our article Understand the Elements and Thinking Modes that Create Fruitful Ideation Sessions.
Not necessarily. You can begin either way. If your idea feels too abstract, start with something concrete to understand the details. If you are deep in specifics, step back to extract the general principles or structure.
The method supports movement in both directions; you choose where to begin based on what feels stuck. Either starting point can open a creative approach: general to specific helps ground ideas, while specific to general reveals patterns. The key is to shift deliberately, not randomly, and use whichever direction enables you to see your challenge with fresh eyes.
Find out how to get more out of ideation and the many tools discussed in our article Introduction to the Essential Ideation Techniques which are the Heart of Design Thinking.
Start by sketching the interface, for example, one for a food shop with clear categories, filtering, and visuals. Examine the sketch closely to bring any issues to the surface. Next, lift to a general interface concept, like listing items by category hierarchy or using clustering logic similar to a library system. Identify the general principles that underlie layout and navigation. Then, create a prototype. Interact with the prototype to investigate how it works, and reapply those general principles to refine your original interface or design new ones.
Use constraints—mobile-first, limited screen, assumed memory—to push your creativity. Iterate back and forth between concrete prototypes and schematic abstractions to produce interfaces that feel intuitive, scalable, and grounded.
Explore how to use sketches and prototypes to power your way to better design solutions
Yes, because when you start with something vague, making it concrete helps you see what exactly needs solving: maybe it is navigation or clarity. Conversely, when your definition is narrow, stepping back reveals systemic issues like taxonomy or flow. For example, is your real problem menu overflow or lack of intuitive category structure?
Abstraction lets you redefine “what is broken.” Repeated shifts help refine the problem statement: from “menu will not fit” to “menu navigation needs scalable structure.” That sharpening ensures you are solving the root issue, not just a symptom.
Speaking of root issues, check out the 5 whys approach for another way to detect the real problem(s) behind a symptom.
Stop when additional shifts no longer yield new insights or design alternatives. You know you are done with it when your concrete prototypes and general frameworks support similar, robust solutions. Too few shifts might leave blind spots; too many shifts mean a waste of time. A practical rule is after two or three cycles, if new ideas still emerge, continue. If patterns repeat and tests feel strong, though, you have explored enough. Your concrete designs should feel clear, and your general principles should apply across contexts meaningfully.
Keep the creativity sparks coming; enjoy our Master Class, Harness Your Creativity to Design Better Products with Alan Dix, Professor, Author and Creativity Expert.
The biggest mistake lies in freezing at one level and only working concretely without abstraction, or only theorizing without grounding. Concrete detail without patterns misses reusable insights, while abstract planning without specifics overlooks real constraints.
Another issue to watch out for is to not let constraints restrict thinking prematurely. Use constraints to expand the solution space, not limit options. Last, but not least, do not forget to cycle back, as developing specifics without re-generalizing (and vice versa) undermines discovery. Overall, avoid doing only one shift and not iterating; the power lies in the movement between levels, not in staying at one.
Pick up some helpful insights into the nature of creativity in this video with Alan Dix.
Product Development and Management Association. (2024, November). A Creative Thinking Process: Problem Abstraction as a Source for Ideation in Product Design. PDMA Knowledge Hub. Retrieved from https://community.pdma.org/knowledgehub/bok/product-design-and-development-tools/creative-thinking-process-problem-abstraction-as-a-source-for-ideation-in-product-design
This article introduces problem abstraction as a systematic way to fuel creativity in product design. It explains how designers can zoom out to generalize problems, then zoom in with concrete, constrained perspectives to unlock new solutions. Using “abstraction laddering” (asking iterative “why” and “how” questions), teams uncover underlying principles that drive stronger ideation. For UX designers, it offers a structured method to generate innovative, user-centered solutions by reframing design challenges. Its clarity and practical focus make it a valuable, freely available reference.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2025). Unlock Your Problem-Solving Magic: The Concrete-to-Abstract Transformation. MIT CSAIL. Retrieved from https://6857blakley.csail.mit.edu/concrete-to-abstract-transform-your-problem-solving-skills
This MIT CSAIL resource explains how shifting between concrete and abstract thinking strengthens creative problem-solving. It demonstrates how “zooming in” to specific examples exposes details and constraints, while “zooming out” to abstract generalizations reveals underlying patterns. By practicing this cognitive flexibility, designers and problem-solvers can expand their solution space and uncover innovative approaches. For UX designers, the material is valuable because it parallels design ideation methods like “more specific and more general,” providing a scientific basis for alternating perspectives. Its academic context ensures credibility and free accessibility.
ArtVersion. (2025, May 11). Designing with instinct: Why abstract thinking and intuition matter in UX and UI. ArtVersion Interactive. Retrieved from https://artversion.com/blog/designing-with-instinct-why-abstract-thinking-and-intuition-matter-in-ux-and-ui/
This article from ArtVersion emphasizes the role of abstract thinking and intuition in creating effective UX and UI designs. It argues that while data and concrete details drive usability, designers also need to think abstractly to envision new possibilities and craft intuitive user experiences. By blending concrete problem-solving with instinctive, big-picture thinking, the piece shows how designers can balance precision with creativity. For UX professionals, it provides actionable insights into leveraging both analytical and intuitive approaches to build more engaging, human-centered interfaces.
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