Questions in Design Thinking
Launch library · evergreen read
Good design rarely starts with a solution; it starts with a carefully asked question about what a person is actually trying to accomplish, which is often quite different from the feature they initially requested when describing the problem.
Designers are trained to keep asking why beneath an initial request, since the first answer usually describes a symptom rather than the underlying need, and only a few layers of further questioning tend to reach the real problem worth solving.
This habit of questioning before building saves considerable wasted effort later, since a beautifully designed solution to the wrong problem still fails to satisfy the person it was meant to help in the first place.
Prototyping sessions often build this questioning directly into the process, showing early, rough versions to real users specifically to surface the gap between what was assumed and what people actually need, long before too much has been invested in the wrong direction.