The Art of Asking [Questions]
I recently published a new class on Skillshare called The Art of Asking [Questions]. This is an all-levels class focused on how to better plan, structure, and frame questions within design research. This class is ideal for people interested in UX research and strategy, design thinking, systemic design, and creative problem-solving.
Asking good questions is a stepping stone to breakthrough innovations and powerful human experiences.
When it comes to UX design and design thinking, the process of forming, asking, and exploring questions is crucial to understanding people’s goals, needs, behaviors, and frustrations — and it can make or break a design process.
Questions are an essential part of problem solving, and as UX designers and design researchers, it’s especially critical that we include questions in every part of our work. We have to make sure we’re addressing the appropriate problems, and that we have defined the right problems to address to begin with — and to do so, we have to ask a lot of questions.
Before we can design products, processes, services, and experiences, we have to ask questions in order to really understand why we are designing, what we intend to solve for, and what people want and need that a design solution can help address. We often call this design research, user research, or UX research, but the process of developing and asking questions is applicable throughout every stage of the design process, and is useful beyond what we consider to be design projects.
In the class, we explore what good questions are, why they matter, and how to generate good questions for your own projects. Students will practice creating and asking questions through a unique real-life project. Beyond the class, students can use insights gathered through the project to ideate and prototype research-informed approaches to simple and complex problems.
Check it out — I’d love to know what you think!
