Creating Great HMWs
A How Might We question sets the width of everything that follows. Too broad and the team flounders, too narrow and you have smuggled the answer into the question. This lesson covers finding the level in between.
After this lesson you can
- Pitch a question wide enough to open and narrow enough to start from.
- Notice when the answer has been smuggled into the question.
- Generate several How Might We questions from one insight before choosing between them.
Sign in to watch
The film runs two or three minutes. Everything else on this page is open.
Module Overview
A How Might We question turns an insight into something a team can brainstorm against, which is why it comes after the research rather than before it. The film offers a simple ad lib: how might we take some action, to help or enable or support a particular user, to reach a benefit that genuinely matters to them.
Carried through from the last lesson: the insight that some people treat their speed through airport security as a mark of being well travelled becomes “how might we recognise and reward experienced travellers' expert knowledge?” That is one of many you could write from the same insight, and the advice is to write several and keep the ones your team has real energy for.
A good one puts a real user at the centre, reads as an invitation, and can be answered in many different ways. A poor one has the solution already baked in, or serves the organisation rather than the person, or sets out to persuade them. Words like force, make or convince are the tell. Put different users at the centre of different versions, and give the odd or unexpected one a go, because that is where unexplored territory tends to be.
Where this usually goes wrong
- Writing one question and walking into the brainstorm with it.
- Wording it so that only variations on your favourite idea can answer it.
- Reaching for “improve the experience”, which no room can start anywhere from.
Check it landed
3 questions, and one of them has no right answer. You get the reasoning either way.
Which of these is pitched at a useful width?
What exactly is wrong with "How might we add live chat to the checkout page?"
You have one strong insight. How many How Might We questions do you write from it?
Sign in to answer these and see the reasoning behind each one.
Put it to work
2 templates go with this lesson. Each one has its own guide on when and how to use it.
