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Fashioning dynamic UX with de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats
Segmented thinking for an efficient UX process
In high school, I was fortunate enough to spend several years piloting a course on systems thinking, a way of solving problems laterally. This was a course in creativity and real-world application, co-taught by an award-nominated English teacher and a renowned Harvard engineering professor. These educators taught me to combine theoretical and technical systems with critical thinking. Through this practice, we examined issues, solution processes, and how they are connected.
Years later, I recognize parts of the systems thinking model throughout my work in User Experience. UX principles, after all, align with some of the major principles of systems thinking:
- Interconnectivity: How issues relate to each other, identifying patterns within related issues, and knowing how feedback loops affect a system
- Perspectives: How different viewpoints comprehend problems and apply solutions
- Boundaries: Determining the scope and scale of a project, and how solutions fit within and beyond a multitude of restrictions
I’ve been thinking about one text, in particular, that provides one such system used to understand and tackle problems — Dr. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. Conceptually, the system is easy to grasp, and it plays off a metaphor that we hear all the time in the workplace. In our UX roles, we wear many different “hats” all the time, to engage with different aspects of our job or to facilitate different thinking processes.
When I first learned about de Bono’s hats, we wore actual hats with the six colors he uses to represent six different processes. Of course, you don’t need something on your head to understand the thoughts happening in it. You just need to understand how to assign different critical thought skills at different times.
But the hats can be fun anyway. I recommend grabbing one — any hat will do! Put it on, physically and symbolically, while we explore how we can use de Bono’s hats as a valuable UX tool.
De Bono and his hats
Dr. Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono could certainly be called a modern day Renaissance man akin to da Vinci himself — the polymath’s work history is expansive. He’s worked as a physician, a psychologist, a writer, and more. Talk about wearing hats!
He actually coined the term lateral thinking as a means to creatively solve problems in his 1967 book, The Use of Lateral Thinking. Dr. de Bono is thought to be among the greatest contemporary philosophers, and to many people, he’s one of the greatest thinkers of all time.
Six Thinking Hats, published in 1985, represents something revolutionary — usable, practical, and coherent philosophy for the masses. The information system of the book, too, provides a revolutionary tool to help problem solvers organize their thinking processes. The six hats, each a different color, represent six distinct functions: roles your brain can play. By mentally putting on, taking off, or switching hats, users of the system can better focus their thoughts to remove biases and find solutions more efficiently.
So what are each of these hats, exactly? How can wearing them elevate our UX processes?
Blue Hat: Managing
First to arrive and last to part, the Blue Hat guides your thinking process from start to finish. This hat is the manager of every other hat, respectfully facilitating and upholding the entire process. It asks its wearer to consider the big idea, to determine objectives, and to structure the other hats in sequences that work toward a solution.
In UX, I often see this role performed by managers. They plan meeting agendas and strategically ask participants to share input; they coordinate design sprints or article objectives; they ask teammates to balance facts with emotion and creativity, positivity with criticism.
But you don’t need to be a manager to wear this hat — it’s all about organization, and anyone can organize themselves. Wearing blue means understanding your goals and prioritizing certain aspects of your process to reflect your current needs.
While the Blue Hat lays an important foundation, participants in the six hat system should wear it in moderation. It’s great for getting started, wrapping things up, or getting things back on track, but too much control can be a bad thing. Think of it this way: Blue’s a brilliant color. But doesn’t mean it’ll match every outfit. Similarly, for the six hat process to work, people need to have the time and freedom to experiment and engage with other thinking styles.
White Hat: Facts and information
Second, you’ll likely wear the White Hat, which represents information. Yes — all information. It asks you to consider what you already know and what can be factually represented with user feedback, statistics, data, and boundaries. But it’s not just known knowledge that matters to the White Hat; it also asks you to consider what isn’t yet known and still needs to be learned.
Projects usually begin with some semblance of a White Hat. UX researchers pinpoint known issues and seek to understand how users interpret or solve them. Writers like me begin an article with a checklist or outline of important talking points. Designers will know what visual components, statistically, will be most appealing and accessible to an audience.
Knowledge, however, is always changing. The most engaging part of being human is that we constantly learn from one another, and grow from those experiences. Our UX should mirror this fluidity; it should change and progress as we learn more about — and from — our users. As you undergo the iterative UX process, revisit the White Hat in each step. This process allows you to continually evaluate your own knowledge and determine where there’s room for growth.
Of course, overinvesting in White Hat thinking can mean trouble. Overburdening a project with facts and figures can obscure other parts of the process, like considering solutions or engaging with empathy. Facts are important, but there needs to be room for feelings, too.
Green Hat: Creativity
Once you’re aware of what you know and what you need to know, it’s time to get creative! That’s what the Green Hat stands for: new ideas, new possibilities, and alternative solutions. This hat asks its wearer to consider new perceptions, explore new avenues of thought, and express new concepts to their team.
We see this all the time in UX design meetings and idea brainstorms, in developers offering creative in-code solutions, in writing that explores new ideas and responds to changes in the field. Creativity is all around us. Ingenuity is the backbone of the tech industry and spurs its growth.
The Green Hat may be the most fun to wear, but we have to be careful not to lose ourselves in dreams. Wearing this hat for too long can make us lose touch with pragmatism and cause us to miss the reality of the situation at hand. While the Green Hat gives us the space to generate new ideas, these ideas need to be structured, sorted through, and evaluated.
Yellow Hat: Positivity
Of course the Yellow Hat symbolizes positivity — just think of all the wonderful things yellow has given us! Tweety Bird, Betty’s White’s hair, sunshine and summer and Del’s lemonade. De Bono’s Yellow Hat follows yellow’s traditional representation as bright and optimistic. The Yellow Hat encourages us to explore the positives, to seek value and benefit in each solution we consider. It asks us to determine best-cases scenarios, and to explore the potential of ideas.
In UX, this manifests in the way we see each solution as a contribution towards a meaningful user experience. We try to see the bright side of every solution as we tailor it to fit the consumer needs.
It’s easy to pat yourself on the back and say your solution is great without looking at it through a more critical lens. Optimism is important. Without it, what’s the point of even trying? But even as we engage with that light, we need to analyze everything we do and remember that one yellow hatter’s ray of sunshine might be another’s cloudy day.
Black Hat: Critical judgement
Where there is light, there is also darkness — sort of. De Bono’s Black Hat represents negativity, in a traditional sense. Wearing this hat means looking at a situation with a critical, often negative eye. It means playing devil’s advocate, even against your own favorite ideas, designs, and words.
We often see darkness as a bad thing, but it’s really an opportunity to grow your other senses, to get a new kind of vision. The Black Hat allows us to see why something might not work, and consider potentially negative perspectives. It allows us to spot difficulties and danger, and predict where things might go wrong. Most importantly, it gives us a judgement-free space to offer criticism without offense.
In my UX experience, I don’t often see the Black Hat separated from other hats. I see it combined with positivity (yellow) or emotion (red), or I see it used in moments of creativity (green) to dismiss new ideas as they are just taking form. Instead of combining the Black Hat with other hats in small stints, give it separate time for focus and reflection. Containing criticism within a certain time frame provides a forum for more meaningful and thoughtful conversation.
As with any hat, wearing the Black Hat too much can be problematic or detrimental to your team. Criticism can be a powerful and useful tool, but only when used in balance with creativity and encouragement. Find power in using critique to complement creativity and shape brainstorms into sharp solutions.
Red Hat: Feelings and emotions
Red has long been a symbol of emotion and passion, and de Bono’s interpretation stays true to the color’s classic associations. Putting on the Red Hat means embracing emotion and ego, expressing gut reactions and initial feelings. It’s about following your own hunches and intuition and sharing feelings ranging from fear to love to hatred.
The UX field focuses on our users, of course, but in doing so, we often forget to consider our own emotions. After all, we are users ourselves; we often have gut reactions and intuitions that inform how we work. The Red Hat reminds us to consider our own feelings and passions when working on a project.
At the end of the day though, users are what matter most — which is why the Red Hat should only be used in short bursts. While other hats may occupy several minutes each, de Bono recommends that a Red Hat session take no more than 30 seconds. Keeping Red Hat sessions short and focused encourages self-awareness without enabling an emotional spiral. It’s easy to get wrapped up in our own emotional states: Red Hat bursts use intuition as a tool to guide our workflow.
So you’ve met the six hats. Now what?
Every team is different. Find a process that works for yours. De Bono’s system recommends giving each hat approximately two minutes and using them in specific orders for different tasks, such as:
- Initial ideas: Blue, white, green blue
- Quick feedback: Blue, black, green, blue
- Solving problems: Blue, white, green, red, yellow, black, green, blue
These ordered color systems might work for some, but won’t for others. When you start a new project and wear the Blue Hat for the first time, think about your thinking. Organize your process, the order of the other hats, to address the areas of thinking your team will explore for your given project.
You might choose to wear actual hats, making a fun icebreaker out of your thought system design process — and maybe even learning about your teammates’ strange fashion decisions along the way. Some teams may never even reference the hats, instead choosing to refer to the roles they play instead of their colors. What’s most important is that you segment, compartmentalize, and sequence your thought process. By doing so, you acquaint yourself with logical problem solving and keep your process in check as you navigate toward your solutions.
Why should we care about wearing these hats?
As professionals, we should always strive to improve ourselves and learn how to work more efficiently within a group. In high school, systems thinking helped me solve both theoretical problems and real-world problems (like addressing food security in our local town using a community garden).
If high school students can use this system to better their process and their world, so can you.
In de Bono’s own words, the hat system can help you:
- Hold critical meetings without emotions or egos making bad decisions
- Avoid the easy but mediocre decisions by knowing how to dig deeper
- Increase productivity and even more important — be more effective
- Make creative solutions the norm
- Maximize and organize each person’s thoughts and ideas
- Get to the right solution quickly and with a shared vision
So don your feather caps and berets; your baseball, bucket, and bowler hats; your fedoras and trilbies and beanies. Whatever style you choose, make sure it’s your thinking hat.
Have a story of your own? Write with us! Our community thrives on diverse voices — let’s hear yours.
