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Product Design Problem Solving

Designing without Figma II

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Disclaimer

This is not an exhaustive list or prescriptive recommendation. This is merely a baseline for a train of thought or approach. This information can and should be adapted upon to fit your professional needs.

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Your Role

Roles You Play

Problem Solving

Solutioning + Experimenting

Shipping

As a product designer you are expected to where many hats but the bulk of your expertise is expected to be designing in Figma. 40% of design happens outside of Figma. Maximizing the rituals and exercises outside of Figma make the work in the design tool that much easier. Part 2 of this 4 part series is about exercises for problem thinking/solving.

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Problem Thinking

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Define=Diagnose=Questioning

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Questioning not Solving.

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The effectiveness of your solution is dependent upon the quality of your thinking and the quality of your thinking is informed by the questions you ask.

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Thinking

Questions

Answers

Outcomes

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Uninformed Simplicity

Informed Complexity

Design Process

Informed Simplicity

Chart by @gentry

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Uninformed Simplicity

Informed Complexity

Design Process

Informed Simplicity

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Questioning the brief

What is the client trying to achieve?
What are the client's expectations?
What is the business trying to achieve?
Has this been solved before by our competitors? Which of our competitors are fulfilling these expectations exceptionally well?
Is this a design issue or a system problem? Does this require a design solution or a systems solution?
What cross-functional and internal/external systems are contributing to this problem?
What percentage of clients are experiencing this?
What has been the worst outcome of this problem? How could it get worse?
What has changed externally that makes our existing strategy/solution ineffective?
What types of clients are experiencing this? Power user ? Occasional user? New user? Internal user?

Using a line of questioning learn about the problem from a customer, system and metric perspective.

21 Questions

You do that by asking questions. This is framework of 21 questions that I came up with that I approach every new project or problem with. It’s not prescriptive and I haven’t written it down until now, but these are the gears that turn for me at the beginning of every project. This is your line of questioning when ever presented with a new problem or task. How do you assess a problem from its onset. This is prior to getting into figma, before creating a diagram, before anything.

How do you approach every problem with the same frame of mind. Not all of the questions are applicable to each problem. Right if I know Im making something as basic as a tool tip half of these might not be necessary. What is important is one you have these are your disposal and 2 you can discern when to ask certain question based on the project.

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Problem

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Problem Solving Thinking Vantage Points

Metrics

Customer

System

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Problem Solving Thinking Vantage Points

Problem

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Customer - What is the customer expectation? How does this differ from the experience.
Metrics - What metrics are being impacted? What is the business trying to achieve?
System - What internal systems are contributing to the problem? Are the contributing system components flexible?

Customer

Metrics

System

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Customer View

Mental Model - What is the customer expectation? How does this differ from the experience. Where does the frustration arise? What is their alternative ?
Novelty - Does a solution already exist ? Does this customer segment exist? Is this a net new industry problem ? Does the our user journey account for their experience?
Who - New client ? Old client? Confident ? Apprehensive ? Shopping around ?

Customer

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Metric View

Current Metric - What is the metric we are measuring today ? How is it performing, how do we want it to move?
Supplemental Outcome - What are some of the byproducts of making a change or moving this metric?
Externality - What are some adverse outcomes ?

Metrics

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Metric View

Current Metric - What is the metric we are measuring today ? How is it performing, how do we want it to move?
Supplemental Outcome - What are some of the byproducts of making a change or moving this metric?
Externality - What are some adverse outcomes ?

Metrics

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What are we measuring that’s the best indicator of what’s going wrong? If anecdotal how can we validate that.

Metric View

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Does it store my login. I don’t know who this company is, I don’t know what they’re pulling from. This is where I’d want to get more information, what exactly are you doing in my bank account - Client Interview

Good Indicator

Better Indicator

Metric View

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Metric View

Current Metric - What is the metric we are measuring today ? How is it performing, how do we want it to move?
Supplemental Outcome - What are some of the byproducts of making a change or moving this metric?
Externality - What are some adverse outcomes ?

Metrics

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Metric View

Changing Account Creation

Current Metric - Get more people to preliminary rates
Supplemental Outcome - People who were going to initially drop off earlier will now drop off later
Externality - The lower barrier to entry means low intent clients make it further down the funnel

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What are we measuring ?
How do we want that metric to move?
What are some of the byproducts of moving that metric in our desired direction?

Metric View

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Problem Solving Points

Customer - What is the customer expectation? How does this differ from the experience.
Metrics - What metrics are being impacted? What is the business trying to achieve?
System - What internal systems are contributing to the problem? Are the contributing system components flexible?

Customer

Metrics

System

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Is your problem limited to one system?
Is this a short term design problem and long term system problem?
Does the system determine the UI?
Is there a cross functional workaround to system limitations?
Is the data architecture beholden to the system or vice versa?

System View

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Problem Solving Points

Customer - What is the customer expectation? How does this differ from the experience.
Metrics - What metrics are being impacted? What is the business trying to achieve?
System - What internal systems are contributing to the problem? Are the contributing system components flexible?

Customer

Metrics

System

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How do you translate learning into shared understanding as a designer?

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Problem Alignment via Artifacts

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Artifact Stages

Kickoff - Diagrams, One pagers, notes
Architecture Ideation - Diagrams, wireframes, annotations
Prototyping - Wireframes, concept mocks, mid fidelity
Handoff - High Fidelity with detailed interaction specifications and edge case mapping

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Artifacts should be consistent with the level of detail to be communicated. The more complete the thought the higher level of detail the artifact should be.

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Make the problem everybody’s problem. A problem of all is a problem that gets solved.

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You have an idea? So what.

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See Part III: Solutions & Experimentation