How to Actually use “How Might We…?” Questions

Those of us who are familiar with design thinking are familiar with IDEO. These guys are the godfathers of interesting facilitation techniques that stimulate diverse groups of people to solve problems and come up with solutions.

So the story goes, the first thing IDEO does when they tackle a new design challenge is to begin with the question “How Might We…?” and then generate responses from there.

The technical term for their approach is “Challenge Mapping.”

But every time I’ve heard of this approach, I’ve wondered if there was more to this than just the HMW question. What does Challenge Mapping actually look like in practice? How do you do it?

I’ll show you how:

What is it?

Challenge mapping is a collaborative problem framing and refining method that generates many alternative strategies and tactics for tackling a problem.

Why should I use it?

Because a question is better at priming the collective intelligence of a group than a problem statement. Challenge mapping re-frames your problem in a way that invites others to think on it and take action. It helps you make distinctions between both the strategic and tactical approaches you can take to solving a problem. And…