Good Designers Ask Great Questions
“The ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer.” - IBM founder Thomas J. Watson
Question help to create a new perspective; Challenging the conceptual framework is like testing our hypothesis. Asking good questions and getting good answers is like qualifying or correcting our assumptions to help us to create different or better outcomes... Here are 6 core questions which I can guide you to use before designing your product
Objective - Problem - Target - Expectations - Experience - Success
1. What is the main objective?
- Set the purpose of your product
- Why did we create this product?
- What is the main benefit for the user?
- Why would someone use the product?
- When the user would use the product?
2. What problem are we solving?
- A problem well stated is a problem half solved
- What are the main pain points?
- What competitors are solving the same kind of problem?
- What can we learn from competitor's problem?
- How do users currently solve their problems?
Remember; Before you try to solve a problem make sure you "understand" it thoroughly
3. Who are we designing for?
- Create a persona and specific scenario, Start with 4 main questions: Who, What, Why, and How.
- Who is the character that goes with age, sex, education, job position, income, address, family characteristics, personality?
- What is their goal?
- Why they use your product?
- How do they discover information?
Designer And Client 5 by DeeKay
4. What will your user be expecting?
- Make it clear why they are opening your product
- What are they expecting to find?
- What information are they looking for?
- What do they want to do?
- What do they hope to accomplish?
5. What is experience?
- Create a fake scenario for the user
- When is he going to use your product?
- What are his desires and pains when using this product?
- What motivates he to take action?
- What conflicts they has?
6. What does success look like?
- Understand what you are aiming for
- What are the business goals?
- What is the ideal scenario?
- What are the short term and long term goals?
- How will you measure success qualitatively and quantitatively?
Good questions will lead us to clearer methods and goals. Creating “quality questions"can be initially difficult, but gets easier with practice...Good Luck!
