Sometimes when we get a new design brief from a client, it can be difficult to know where to start.
I sometimes use the 5Ws framework, which stands for
- Who
- What
- Where
- When
- Why
Sometimes I will start with 5 boxes, each with their respective title and fill each box with post-it notes. The starting frame is the design brief, or business challenge.
We should aim to ask why questions, “Why does this problem exist?”, “Why do this challenge at all?”, “Why is this valuable to the client or customer?” etc.
What asks state questions, such as “What is the goal?” “What are we trying to achieve?” “What does it look like?”. Sometimes its fun to conjoin others such as “What happens when we do X and why does this matter?”
Where is all about place (not necessarily location); “where is this problem occurring?” “where should we start fixing the problem”, “where in the world (geography) will this problem impact?”
When is all about time, “When should we start?” “When should it finish? When does the problem start?”, etc.
Who is asking about people (but it could also be more broader); such as “Who is responsible?” “Who will this benefit?” “Who will this impact?” “Who does this person report to?”, etc.
There are other ideas I’d like to throw into this mix.
Sometimes I like to ask on a project: “What do we know?” and “What is the client asking for?” as two starting points; this is asking, what do we know about the project, the client, the landscape, any research, or trends. It’s meant to capture the team’s current understanding, knowledge but also highlight possible gaps.
It is not necessary to know everything. It’s not aimed at blocking the project from moving on, its simply making a case or statement to say “This is what we know about the project, the goals, the world it’s living in, our knowledge of said subject”.
This concept is similar to Sun Tzu’s Five Factors of Purpose, Landscape, Climate, Doctrine, Leadership, Territory. Though I will usually leave out doctrine, leadership; as sometimes its not possible to know these ahead of times.
- Purpose is your moral imperative, it is the scope of what you are doing and why you are doing it. It is the reason why others follow you.
- Landscape is a description of the environment that you’re competing in. It includes the position of troops, the features of the landscape and any obstacles in your way.
- Climate describes the forces that act upon the environment. It is the patterns of the seasons and the rules of the game. These impact the landscape and you don’t get to choose them but you can discover them. It includes your competitors actions.
- Doctrine is the training of your forces, the standard ways of operating and the techniques that you almost always apply. These are the universal principles, the set of beliefs that appear to work regardless of the landscape that is faced.
- Leadership is about the strategy that you choose considering your purpose, the landscape, the climate and your capabilities. It is to “the battle at hand”. It is context specific i.e. these techniques are known to depend upon the landscape and your purpose.
- Territory – Industrial environment, competitiveness
Other additional ideas could be: “What do we think the biggest problem/challenge is?” and if necessary, add some kind of justification. This should also spur an activity to reframe the problem.
Also it is useful to look at the quick wins, blockers and enablers there are on the project?
If we combine these together, a simple framework for this could be:
- The client brief
- What are the goals of the project (What is being asked of us)
- What are the deliverables of the project (if any)
- What do we know? (Our knowledge of the project, research, landscape, territory, climate, purpose)
- What is the biggest challenge / problem? (Follow up question: Can we reframe the problem?)
- What are the quick wins?
- What are the blockers and enablers?
The above is a work in progress, but I think its a good start for any project to try to combine the 5Ws with their own internal processes to understand business challenges, and how to tackle them.