UX/UI Design: Foundations to Practice · The Design Process
Framing the Problem Correctly
The specific way a problem gets framed during the Define phase shapes everything that follows, and a subtly wrong frame can send an entire design effort toward a solution that technically works but misses what actually mattered.
How a problem gets stated, not just what data was gathered about it, genuinely shapes which solutions a team will even consider; framing a problem as 'users cannot find the settings menu' invites a narrower set of solutions than framing the same underlying difficulty as 'users cannot predict where settings-related actions will live,' even though both framings might be describing the same set of underlying user struggles observed during discovery.
Key Takeaways
- How a problem gets framed genuinely shapes which solutions a team will even consider, not just what data was gathered about the problem.
- The 'how might we' technique frames a problem broadly enough to invite multiple solutions while staying specific enough to remain grounded in the actual discovered problem.
- A frame that already implies a specific solution, like 'we need a better tutorial,' forecloses other solution directions a more neutral framing would keep open.
- A useful check on frame accuracy asks whether it would resonate with the actual users observed during discovery if read back to them directly.