Frame "how might we" questions

Design-Thinking method: Frame "how might we" questions

This method helps to identify and commonly agree on a single challenge statement that will guide you and your team throughout the rest of the process. This question will allow you to launch the brainstorming, therefore it must be formulated properly to obtain satisfactory results: it has to be broad enough to offer a wide range of solutions, and, at the same time, narrow enough to allow the team to have some useful limitations.

How to:

1. Start with an analysis of the information shared beforehand. Take a step back, re-read the material you gathered, and look at it holistically. The aim is to identify how to potentially match information, and to find some meaningful patterns of possibilities and issues that can be turned into challenges. Use your intuition to identify the most relevant matters of the topic you’ve explored.
2. Once you’ve identified relevant matters through analysis, point out the following elements: subject (people addressed by the challenge) action (key activities to face in the challenge) and object (specific focus of the challenge). These elements will help you to properly frame the challenge, taking into consideration all the necessary ingredients. Once you’ve identified the elements, combine them, forming a question that begins with: How might...? How to...? In what ways...?

You can download the “How might we...” template or find it in the Materials page, along with all the other Resources in the course.