The Users Don’t Know What They Want, or Do They? — Asking the Right Questions for UX

At its core, UX is about solving problems. And to solve problem you first need to single out the signal from the noise. Given the intricacies of business and complex user behaviour, where do we start? How do we even know which questions to ask?

What do we ask?

The first step of finding a solution is making sure you have the right problem. This is where you have to sieve through a lot of information and noise with the hope that the there’s a signal at the end of the line. There are several ways to do this, including user research, interviews and workshops. Throughout these sessions, you will have excellent opportunities to dissect a business and ask questions as an outsider looking in.

With so much to ask, how do we know which questions are right? As a rule, we avoid asking feature-oriented questions:

• “tell us what you need”
• “will exporting to an Excel spreadsheet work for you?”
• “would you like to have a white or black dashboard?”
• “what do you think about this feature?”

Asking these types of feature-oriented questions will result in only getting information that will lead to cosmetic solutions that don’t solve the real problem. It will not bring a transformative result that will create the impact your client is looking for. It is hollow and you, the designer, know it.

Instead, we try and ask questions like:

• “What are the problems you face when performing this task?”
• “Which piece of information helps you make a more informed decision?”
• “What is the goal of your task?”
• “How does achieving that goal contribute to your KPI?”
• “Who do you rely on to accomplish that goal?”

This helps reframe the discussion from being feature-oriented to being user-oriented. After all, we’re not designing for systems. We’re designing for people.

Who do we ask?

At Stampede, we start asking preliminary questions very early on in the client engagement to get an idea of the complexity at hand. We then develop a loose hypothesis to help guide the early stage discussions.

The peak question-vaganza happens during our UX workshops, a joint focused session that can last between 1–4 days depending on the complexity of the problem. This is where we hunker down with our users and stakeholders to gain clarity on the right problem and validate our hypothesis.

If you don’t have access to the end users, the customer-facing team is the next best thing. They front-liners mitigate frustrations, troubleshoot issues and work with the end users day in and day out. Having them join your discussion will reveal things about your users that sometimes even the CEO is unaware of.

“But these users don’t know what they want!”

We hear this often, especially in organisations where there’s a deep-rooted culture of supremacy over users. The truth is, the more you practise UX, the more you realise you don’t know things. And that every UX session with the users are accelerated learning process for the UX designer, not the other way round.

I think the users know a great deal about the problem they’re facing. They may not know the solution to the problem but then again, it’s our job as UX practitioners to design the solution for them.

Many of us, however, are not equipped to ask them right questions. Nor are we willing to if it will upset the way things have always been done.

Guiding principle check

This is where your guiding principles will help you decide. Ask the right question, and you will get closer to the right solution.

Keep asking the wrong ones, because it’s easier and comfortable to do, and you might end up delivering the wrong solution. In doing so, the client would have wasted their money and time — they just don’t know it yet. It’s akin to applying a new coat of paint to a crumbling house — the people outside may be impressed by the new façade but those inside had to cope with the danger of their roof collapsing.

You’d also rob the user of the experience of enjoying a task because they will continue to be served an inefficient process and will be forced to learn using new interface with every “redesign”. And the redesign will keep coming because the problem is never really addressed.

It’s the same circus, just different hoops.

Asking the right questions

At Stampede, we ask questions a lot. You don’t have to prompt us with, “any questions?” because we will keep asking until the session ends or someone stops us. Our team appreciates curiosity and inquisitiveness big time. We believe that to ask good questions, you first have to ask A LOT of questions. And then you wait for the Law of Averages to kick in after your 100th questions, and then you learn again and that’s how you get better at it.

The good news is, we already have it in us to ask the right question. Asking the right question helps us focus our mental energy towards a worthy goal. We’re not solving superficial problem; we’re solving actual problem affecting real people. For a designer, the power to do this gives us a glowing wholesome feeling. I still get goosebumps when this happens.

Asking the right question takes some experience, but I have learnt that good listening skills expedite that fairly quickly. When you start a UX consultation session with client, walk into it thinking “I have so much to learn from this” and you will find yourself becoming a better listener. You will start using questions as a tool not to lead the outcome in your favour, but to encourage clarity and design-thinking in everything you touch.

Make it count

As UX practitioners, we have the time, the skills, the team and the resources to make this happen. We can solve users and organisational problems through design-thinking and have it ripple across the board. It will touch so many more people than we originally intended too.

Imagine an engineer enjoying his work more now that he won’t need to wait anymore for an Excel macro to run for an hour before spitting out the results he needs to start his day. Heck, he will now achieve his daily goals with time to spare. Everything he needs to make a good decision is right at his fingertips.

In return, he can pay closer attention to the critical aspect of his job because he knows he now has the right and timely tools to solve his problems.

Perhaps when he drives home, he drives better because he’s less preoccupied with problems.

And perhaps he is happier to arrive at work the next morning because he knows his skill and expertise are going to be spent being fully productive, making positive change to his organisation.

And because happiness begets happiness, perhaps he will influence others like him to continuously improve themselves and other things. And they in return will influence others like them. And their organisation will pave the way for others in the industry to follow.

Goosebumps?

This article was originally written by Shaza Hakim for the Stampede Blog in September 2017.

About Shaza

Shaza leads the creative process at Stampede with an acquired obsession for finesse and design detail for 10 years. Follow her thoughts on design and team culture on Facebook and find her here on LinkedIn.

About Stampede

Founded in 2006, Stampede is a user experience and digital creative agency in Malaysia. We design user-centred experience and build digital products for businesses all over the world. Find out more about us here.