Improving critical thinking
Defining complex problems
I recently wrote a short post on critical thinking and how we can use How Might We (HMW) questions as a method to break down large and complex problems in a way that frames them as tangible parts of a larger puzzle. Simplified, it’s another method to translate problems into insights and then into opportunity, but in reality it’s a little less defined than that.
Problems lack the means to translate themselves into opportunity. The tools used to translate these problems help us avoid picking the low hanging fruit and dive deeper into the problem at hand. How Might We questions are one such tool. How Might We questions turn your perspective into actionable provocations by framing problems. The goal these How Might We questions is to create questions that provoke meaningful and relevant ideas.
However,
Complex problems are hard to define and the reality is that in practice How Might We’s can become too broad to address, problems can exist that are made up in a larger ecosystem of the products experience making your complex problem just another slightly more broken down complex How Might We.
This is the first hurdle for most. From experience I do not think that one round of HMW question generation is ever enough, it only ever scratches the surface on route to a better understanding. After generation you will often find that there are patterns and clusters form but sometimes these clusters are still as undefined as the larger problem itself. I find that by then taking this new HMW and further more HMW’s from that one, an overall better understanding of that HMW can be acheived — even if any of the new HMW’s generated are not used.
I find that sometimes using more specific features to form more HMW’s is a great way to tackle this. A HMW may read “How might we deliver a more user centric experience?” — Too broad for a useful idea, instead perhaps this HMW should be broken down into one such as “How might we change our checkout experience to be more enjoyable?” or maybe even this could be taken one step further to “How might we use micro-interactions to make our checkout experience more enjoyable?”.
I think they key is to always remember the insight the HMW stems from and which touchpoint you are working on. With both the insight and context of the problem you shouldnt have any trouble coming up with more tangible HMW’s.
The problems arent just in practice though — there are numerous more acts of cause and affect for the How Might We method. One example could be when speed is valued over anything else. With speed it becomes tempting to breeze over the method and jump straight into solutions without the understanding you could have reached otherwise and thats a shame if you ask me.
People partaking in these exercises often forget that it’s impossible to understand your user 100% after one session, it takes time and thats OK. If you understand your user 6% today then it might be 12% tomorrow but it’s important to stick to these methods of critical thinking to help get you there.
Thanks for reading — I’m currently a user experience intern at Bosch Power Tools and an Industrial Design student at Loughborough University. Feel free to get in touch or check out my website.
