97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 62. Always Go for the Why—the Immutable Basis of Great Design

Andy Knight

At the beginning of any design process—of any creative process, really—you must relentlessly ask, “Why?” Why is the key to all decisions and all paths followed or ignored. How changes constantly, and it should, because you will learn new things throughout the process. But if every member of the team understands why, you have a fighting chance of getting the how right.

When dealing with business partners and sponsors, particularly those who’ve never been through an end-to-end design process, you must be especially relentless in your pursuit of why, because stakeholders often come with preconceived notions of how. Many times, I’ve framed the why question as, “Help me understand your business goals and how you’re going to measure success.” And more times than I care to remember, the response has been, “Why do you need to know that? You’re just doing the design. Here, I did this over the weekend in PowerPoint, based on what our competitors do.”

I generally don’t resort to salty language or worse. Generally. Instead, I take a deep breath and explain: “If I understand why this is important to your business and your customer, I can ensure that we’re truly solving your business problems and customer needs.” For partners, framing the question in terms of what behavior they’d like to change often helps. To ...