The following are helpful questions I try to answer whenever approaching a new project. Not all of the questions are applicable every time.
These questions were taken from Abby Covert's incredible book, 'How to Make Sense of Any Mess'. Thank you Abby. ✌️
users:
- who are your intended users?
- what do you know about them?
- how can you get to know them better?
- how might they describe this mess?
stakeholders:
- who are your stakeholders?
- what are their expectations?
- what are their thoughts about this mess?
- how might they describe it?
information:
- what interpretations are you dealing with?
- what information is being created through a lack of data or content?
current state:
- are you dealing with too much information?
- not enough information?
- not the right information?
- or a combination of these?
who matters:
- who is the most important to get agreement from?
- who is the most important to serve?
- what words might make them defensive?
- what words might put them at ease?
- how open are they to change?
- how will this affect their lives?
- how does the current state of things look to them? Is that good or bad?
why:
- why does this work need to be done?
- why is change needed?
- why do these changes matter?
- why should other people care?
- why hasn't this been tackled correctly in the past?
- why will this time be different?
what:
- what are we trying to change?
- what is your vision of the future?
- what is within our abilities?
- what do you know about the quality of what exists today?
- what further research will help you understand it?
- what has been doe before?
- what can you learn from those experiences?
- what is the market competition like?
- has anyone succeeded or failed at this in the past?
how:
- how much time and effort will this take?
- how could this solution look and feel?
- how will this be produced?
- how will this be maintained?
- how will this be measured?
- how will we know if we've succeeded?
- how could we communicate our message?
