Design Strategy
Great Questions Lead to Great Design
Great designers help teams and stakeholders make better decisions by using questions to identify opportunities, reveal underlying needs, and understand user context—all of which lead to better designs.
Great designers help teams and stakeholders make better decisions by using questions to identify opportunities, reveal underlying needs, and understand user context.
even before designers start “designing.”
Questions are a genuine expression of our curiosity and interest in something. They are the means by which people seek meaning in the surrounding world and often trigger our willingness to explore.
When designers are faced with a problem, their brain is programmed to find a good enough solution right away and act upon it.
However, it is important to note that those willing to deliver successful products and services must face the problems and build a deeper understanding of them in order to come up with valuable insights.
By knowing how questions work and how to use them cleverly, designers can unleash the potential of good questions to build understanding, trigger the imagination, and foster collaboration.
Why some Designers Don’t Ask Questions
Designers typically operate in fast-moving environments which demand focusing on quick solutions and delivery.
In that context, questions like “Why do we need to solve that problem?” or “How did you notice this problem?” which may lead to a better understanding of the underlying causes and needs, are seen as interruptions that slow down the process.
While quick wins are OK in some situations, designers also have the responsibility to help teams establish direction and not waste valuable resources working—no matter how fast—on the wrong problems.
Designers are like detectives; they need information from many different sources in order to resolve their cases. And what is a key skill that good detectives have?
Asking smart questions that help them clarify the case, solve the puzzle and find the truth.
Why Don’t Designers Ask Questions as Often as They Should?
Some designers are afraid of annoying people.
When someone presents a new idea or solution to the team, questions that reveal weaknesses or uncovered areas can make owners feel uncomfortable. They thought they had it all figured out, and suddenly, there’s an element of uncertainty introduced into the picture.
They realize there is more to think about than they had expected, so they look at the designer as an “annoyance.” Designers should make it clear that they are not there to annoy people or slow down the process unnecessarily but to help the team build better products; consequently, their feedback should be seen as a valuable contribution and a crucial part of a prudent design process.
A lot of people think of designers at an execution level—decisions are made by technology, business, and marketing teams while designers are there to simply execute commands. But designers also have the responsibility to expose the value of design at a strategic level.
Some designers lack the confidence and training—both to ask good questions and to do it in a way that clearly reveals their will to help and collaborate. As everything in life, asking good questions is a matter of training. The more you do it, the better you get at it.
Types of Effective Questions for Designers
A good question is the one that lets you obtain the type, quality, and quantity of information you need. In order to do so, designers have to decide both the type of questions they use and the way they formulate them.
Open-ended questions encourage people to reflect and reveal what’s important for them. They allow people to freely expand on what is comfortable for them, rather than justifying their thoughts.
- Explorative questions force expansion on new points of view and uncovered areas. Have you thought of…?
- Affective questions reveal people’s feelings about something. How do you feel about…?
- Reflective questions encourage more elaboration. What do you think causes…?
- Probing questions invite a deeper examination. Can you describe how…?
- Analytical questions look for the roots of a problem. What are the causes of…?
- Clarifying questions help align and avoid misunderstandings. So, you mean that..?
Closed questions call for specific answers—usually yes or no—or they force the respondent to select an answer from a given set, or to agree or disagree with a statement. Closed questions tend to focus on facts—what, when, where—and are usually easy to answer. For example: “Where were you born? How many miles do you drive a month?”
What is a Good Question?
A good question doesn’t depend just on the type of question it is, but also on how you frame it. The form of a question is part of its function. Good questions should be framed under these principles:
Good questions should empower. Disempowering questions focus on why the person did not succeed, which puts that person in a defensive mode. Empowering questions are asked from trust—they get people to think and find their own answers, which transfers ownership and develops self-responsibility.
For example, when giving feedback, instead of just saying “I don’t think this would work,” you could ask, “What other options have you explored, and why did you choose this one?”
Good questions should challenge assumptions. They should help clarify the situation and cause individuals, teams, and organizations to explore the methods, processes, and conventions that drive their actions.
Good questions should cause the person to stretch. They should encourage reflection and help people go beyond the obvious. Good questions motivate people to take things to the next level. For example, when discussing with technology teams, instead of asking, “Can you do this?” you could ask, “Supposing this is the way to go, what would you need to have or eliminate in order to accomplish this?”
Good questions should encourage breakthrough thinking. Good questions open up new possibilities. They involve people in divergent thought processes that lead to new perspectives. For example, when designing a new login screen, instead of just asking, “How could we make the login process faster?” you could ask, “How could we deliver value to our users without them having to log in?”
The Setup for Good Questions
You need to set the stage in order for others to understand why you are asking questions and what for.
Designers are not judges—they are facilitators that provide a context for the information to flow as part of the design thinking framework and help everyone make informed decisions.
You are not a judge, you are a designer who needs to investigate the problem more deeply in order to make decisions, so let people know that.
How Can Asking Good Questions Build Understanding?
Good questions challenge the status quo, forcing people to pay attention to what’s really going on. They help discover how things work, who’s involved, and how everything relates. Questions help create a clear map of the situation.
Find the root of the problem. Some designers focus on symptoms and simply provide solutions for them. Great designers focus on understanding the origin of those symptoms in order to make a good diagnosis.
Challenge assumptions. Individuals, teams, and organizations have their own habits and processes. Good questions help detect their biases and find new perspectives and points of view.
Understanding context. Good questions help gain valuable insights and uncover social, economic, or cultural patterns that take place in a particular context.
Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How
This framework can be used in order to analyze and get a deeper understanding of the situation and context.
Whenever you face a problem, asking these questions will help you get a clear view of the current situation, map critical pain points, and come up with possible ways of taking concrete action that will solve the problem:
- Who interferes with the process in the situation? Users, stakeholders, suppliers, clients, team…
- What elements compose the situation? Actions, behaviors, elements, tools…
- Where does it happen? Geographically, culturally, socially, economically…
- When does this occur? Past, present, future, situational context (when I’m in a rush), frequency…
- Why does this happen? Causes, constraints, needs, motivations…
- How is the situation created? Processes, metrics, results…
When people see things from new perspectives, innovation happens.
How Can Designers Foster Collaboration by Asking Great Questions?
Questions are also a good way to help teammates identify critical points in their designs and find stronger arguments for their decisions. Through intelligent and constructive feedback, the whole team can benefit from everyone’s point of view and area of expertise.
Instead of asking “Isn’t that interaction a bit awkward?” which could make people defensive, great designers ask questions like, “What were other options you considered, and why did you choose this one?” You’ll help people reflect on their work, explain the reasons why, and see questions as a gift.
Questions build respect and show interest in others’ feelings and thoughts. They help align team members, clarify goals, and give people a sense of responsibility and ownership.
Questions also improve self-awareness and develop better listening and greater understanding capabilities. When you ask your teammates questions, you learn about how they think, what they believe in, how they feel in certain situations, etc. It helps build solid links with the team.
Questioning is a powerful tool that every designer should be able to use fluently. As part of a design thinking process, questions can help understand a situation and get valuable insights.
They can also foster creativity and innovation within an organization, and can help teams align and unite.
Asking questions and letting the information flow is essential for growth as an individual and as an organization. But a questioning culture also requires an atmosphere of trust and responsibility, where everyone’s wisdom and capabilities are respected and promoted.
As a designer, ask questions and make sure everyone understands that they come from genuine curiosity and a desire to explore product design more deeply, with the aim of coming up with the best design solution.
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https://www.toptal.com/designers/product-design/design-thinking-great-questions
