Engineering Better Design - A Change of Perspective

From Denise Shekerjian's Uncommon Genius: How Great Ideas Are Born - four exercises that can help engineers change their perspective on problems:

1. Playing With Hypothetical - Think like Charlie Rose or Terry Gross and get good at the art of questioning.  Think about hypothetical questions that shake up how we think about problems. Can this problem be phrased more broadly?  More narrowly?  More abstractly?  Using other verbs?  Other nouns?  Other adjectives?  Can it be broken in half?  Or can its various pieces be consolidated?  Is it possible to relate it to something you might have done in past?  Can it be diagrammed?
2. Sharpening The Eye - Think like an art student.  This creativity exercise focuses on sharpening vision in order to break through mental saturation.  Try and work with both sides of your brain.  Look at problems from different angles and views.
3. Experimenting With Metaphors - Think like a writer.  Engineers need to learn to express a problem as a metaphor.  Try and get the unfamiliar to the familiar.  
4. Experimenting With Visualization - Think like Steven Spielberg.  Visualization is a kind of mental movie.  Rather than the imagery on the screen, what's involved is a theater of the mind. Let your mental imaginary roam broadly.