The Power of Questions in Design, Business, and Life

What if I told you that in order to be happy in life, you must ask the right questions?

Perhaps the most valuable thing I’ve learned as a designer is the value of asking questions.

Believe it or not, questions are an immensely powerful tool that can help you feel fulfilled, or downright miserable. They can help you solve your most vexing problems at work, or leave you spinning your wheels looking for answers.

In this article, I’d like to share just how important asking the right questions is, and how you can do the same, both at Bazaarvoice and in your personal life. If you’re able to ask just one better question after reading this, then I’ll consider it a success.

First, why do questions matter?

Questions direct our focus, and therefore our energy.

Our thoughts, feelings, actions, and results all stem from the questions we ask, oftentimes subconsciously.

When we ask quality questions, we get quality answers. When we ask lousy questions, we get lousy answers.

Consider this...

Let's imagine something unfortunate happens to you - you lose your job.

A bad question might sound like, “What's wrong with me?” or "Why does this always happen!?" Immediately, your brains looks for answers. “I can’t hold a job. I wasn’t valued enough at the company. I stink.”

A more empowering question to this scenario could be, “What could I focus on now that I’ve been putting off for a while?” or "How can I retool so I'm more valuable at my next job?" Asking these questions breeds different responses like: “Now I can spend more time with my kids while I look for a job. Or I could focus on learning how to cook and eat healthy while I have more free time.”

Notice the types of answers your brain looks for as soon as you ask each of those questions. Quite different, right?

Regardless of whether your answers are true, the questions you ask directly give your brain something to look for - so it makes sense to ask good questions.

So what is a good question?

In life, I’d say any question that empowers you.

In business, a good question encourages creative thinking and radical new ideas.

"Questions have a curious power to unlock new insights and positive behavior change in every part of our lives. They can get people unstuck and open new directions for progress no matter what they are struggling with." - Hal Gregersen

Depending on your goals, you can use questions to shape your life.

The same goes for UX design, where asking the right questions is essential to arriving at a well-designed product.

Questions in UX

From project kick-off to research to design execution, asking quality questions in the UX design process is essential.

• Who are we designing for?

• What problem are we solving?

• Why are we solving this problem?

• How are we going to solve the problem?

• What does success look like?

• These are are fundamental questions that directly shape a team’s focus for the better.

Perhaps the most valuable question to ask in user experience and design thinking as a whole is, “why?”

Asking why often gets you closer to understanding the root cause or fundamental problem, which then leads to a better solution that stands the test of time more than a band-aid.

All throughout the design process, it’s important to ask thought-provoking, out-of-the-box questions.

Better Questions at Bazaarvoice

To unlock true innovation as a company, we must start with questions.

A typical question we might ask ourselves here at Bazaarvoice might be, "How do we best display our ratings and reviews to consumers?" This question, while relevant, automatically has the solution of “displaying ratings and reviews to consumers” baked into it.

When trying to innovate, it helps to step back and ask more thought-provoking questions like: “How can we make a consumer’s shopping experience feel completely personal, and inspire confidence throughout their journey?"

Immediately, this higher-level question unlocks higher-level thinking, and does not box us into any pre-cooked solutions.

The next time you’re posed with a work-related challenge, what if you spent the first 10 minutes writing down questions instead of brainstorming answers? See if you can unlock any new avenues of thinking.

As Albert Einstein said:

"If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I'd spend 55 minutes coming up with the right question, and the other 5 answering it."

Try it for yourself

Let's end on a practical note.

Take a personal challenge you're currently dealing with. Something that's been bothering you for quite some time now.

Have something in mind?

Now try to think of a GOOD question you could ask yourself. Here are some ideas:

• What could I learn from this?

• How could this help me get better?

• What am I potentially not considering here?

• How could I think differently about this challenge?

New questions breed new answers. And to get a quality answer, we must first ask a quality question.

What will you choose to ask today?

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