From the course: Practical Design Thinking

Unlock this course with a free trial

Join today to access over 24,900 courses taught by industry experts.

Asking the right questions

Asking the right questions

From the course: Practical Design Thinking

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Asking the right questions

“

- People are normally okay at answering questions that relate to things they've done in the past or tasks they perform regularly. These are called behavioral questions. On the other hand, people are not very good at answering questions that are forward looking and speculative, like, do you think you'd use this feature? Actually, they'll still give you an answer, but those answers aren't very believable. That's because what people say and what they end up doing are often two different things, so the answers they give to these speculative questions aren't as trustworthy as we'd like. What we need to do instead is find questions that rely on people's real actions and demonstrated behaviors. Then rather than asking people to predict what they do in the future, we can watch them doing it right now. When you watch someone working through a task, you are almost sure to be surprised. The attitudes that users bring to the interaction, the mental models they've built up around the task, or the…

Contents