It’s time to reframe ideas

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you’re working on a project and someone comes to you with an idea, off the cuff, something that’s popped into their head etc. You’re there thinking how do I tell this person that it won’t exactly work and they need to think of X. You don’t always want to be the person that’s shitting on everyone’s ideas, so now you’re in a bit of a conundrum.

Look how excited she is about her idea.

In reality, it could be a good idea or a bad idea, but most definitely it is an idea that has come to their head without a huge amount of thought. That could now be a problem if you end up spending valuable time discussing the merits of a fleeting idea; at best you will go down a tangential rabbit hole, and at worst hurt someone’s feelings if it’s swiftly shutdown. To avoid these scenarios we should start to reframe ideas.

When we think of ideas in our heads, we’re coming up with an answer to a question.

Those questions are typically problems, but we don’t always think of it in that way when we start talking about the idea.

As designers we know we need to think divergently at points in the design process. When an idea comes to our head or someone else comes to us with an idea, we should be thinking how could we make this an opportunity to be divergent in our thinking.

I realised I could achieve this by trying to figure out the question at the heart of the idea; we can do this by turning the idea into a “How Might We” question.

“How might we” (HMW) questions are short questions that launch brainstorms.

We regularly use how might we’s in workshops that we run, and they can be very effective tools in ideating lots of different solutions. For those not familiar with HMWs, there’s a link at the bottom of this article.

Idea -> HMW -> Multiple ideas

As an example, after reading the book Hooked by Nir Eyal I had learnt that creating rituals for customers leads to higher retention. I hastily thought of a practical idea to implement this: “We could give customers more and more access to the platform if they keep coming back every single day”.

This was one idea, but the question behind it was actually:

How might we build engaging rituals into the platform for customers?

Helping others turn their idea into a HMW question has several benefits:

1. You’re educating your team on the design process; by learning a common technique for ideation
2. You’re getting to the core of what they were really thinking about when they came up with the idea
3. You’re opening it up from one idea to many many more — now who doesn’t love lots of ideas 😉
4. You avoid the need to dismiss their idea, and they may realise their idea could be a lot stronger with a HMW question instead — keeping their positive energy ⚡️

All of these can help to turn a situation where typically you may just roll your eyes, explaining why it won’t work, into a situation where you’re getting people thinking divergently to a core question. Rather than dismissing someone’s enthusiasm, we help to educate them in ideating more effectively.

One of my principles as a product designer is that we all have a common goal: to build great products.

If you can yourself start to practice this yourself when a rogue (or great) idea comes to mind, then you can do a much better job when a team member or a key stakeholder approaches you about theirs.

Learn more about how to use HMWs here.

For more strategic advice on designing great products, or to see how we can help, send us a DM at ZeroToDesign