If you want to make progress with complex design problems, try creating hypotheses
Define all aspects of a design problem to make it easier to solve
Design isn’t always easy. Sometimes, you’re asked to design with incomplete information, vague requirements, or complex subject matters.
If you’re having trouble understanding the problem, the design requirements, or the basic aspects of a particular project, creating a hypothesis may help.
After all, if you’ve ever watched Netflix on your TV or game console, you’ve benefitted from a design hypothesis.
Design hypotheses, or how to break new ground
Back in 2010, Netflix had a problem. While Netflix.com was up and running, they wanted to expand Netflix to game consoles (and later Smart TVs).
As a result, they needed to develop a new interface for the PS3. However, this was the first time anyone had ever done this. They had no one else to reference, which was problematic because game consoles use different navigation than computers.
With a mouse and keyboard, it was easy to type in the name of a movie or click on whatever interested a user. On the other hand, game controllers (and remotes) had a limited range of motion, and touch-typing text on one was tedious.
Eventually, they came up with four specific ideas they wanted to pursue:
Netflix on TV should show the entire catalog, with different sections accessible through the menu
Netflix on TV should mimic the website experience with a simple, flat design
Netflix on TV should prioritize search and ask the user what they’re looking for before showing box art
Netflix on TV should replicate channel surfing, with a small selection on screen and preview videos of each
To test these ideas, they turned them into hypotheses.
Hypotheses: what you learned in 5th grade works for design
Hypotheses are often part of the Scientific Method, which you might have learned about in middle school.
However, the first three steps are most applicable to Design:
Observe something happening (usually with the user experience or behavior)
Research the topic area (i.e., do Design Discovery and talk with stakeholders/users)
Create an explanatory hypothesis (i.e., Why does this happen?)
While we often do the first two steps informally, following a formal method (and adding a hypothesis) has several advantages.
First and foremost, it forces you to experience a product firsthand. When you’re new to a complex project, other experts may want to give you their explanations and views on how things should work.
While this can be helpful, capturing how things appear as outsiders and first-timers is equally valuable. It is critical to capture your observations as the basis for forming hypotheses.
However, the other benefit is defining what you’re building before sketching something out. While you might not be stuck like Netflix, you might be in a similar situation with vague requirements and incomplete information.
In these cases, leaning into one specific hypothesis can help:
“We predict that [creating this user experience] for [these people] will achieve [these outcomes] because of [these reasons].”
Predicting user behavior with hypotheses
That particular hypothesis comes from “Designing with Data” by Caitlin Tan and Rochelle King, although it’s been slightly altered for the scope of this article.
The purpose is to define several essential aspects that you should have at the end of the Design Discovery process:
What are we designing? While this should seem pretty obvious, to avoid issues, you must be as specific as possible (e.g., “We are designing a better product search and details page workflow.”).
Who are we designing things for? While this should be fairly obvious, the following question requires being as specific as possible.
What business outcomes will user actions achieve? You must talk with your product team to understand this, although often, it doesn’t require huge leaps of logic. For example, if your design is intended to fix problems in the checkout process, your business outcome is likely something like “Getting more users to purchase products.”
What is your design rationale? This question will specifically be used to justify your design decisions for the first question.
Let’s examine how this framework fits the Netflix on TV idea.
We predict that:
[Creating Netflix on TV to mimic Netflix.com with a flat design]: This is our specific user interface.
For [PS3 owners]: We may need additional research on who this user is
will achieve [an increase in hours viewed]: this is the metric that Netflix famously tracks with
because of [PS3 owners are familiar with Netflix.com’s interface]: This is something we’d need to test because this doesn’t seem like a great rationale.
When we break things down like this, a couple of things stand out. First and most importantly, our design rationale seems weak. When there’s a weak design rationale with your hypothesis like this, it’s often best not to move forward with our design idea.
This also raises questions about how much we know about our users and their motivations for using the product. We may need to learn more about game console users and conduct additional research.
However, once we have a reasonable hypothesis, it can help us narrow down what we should explore as design solutions. After all, which is easier to design around:
“Create a Netflix UI that groups various movies together by genre, with a focus on browsing.” Or
“Try any design solution that comes to mind, and hopefully it works?”
Hypotheses break down uncharted territory
One of the things I like about being a Designer is that we’re often working in uncharted territory.
Your product team may have a list of requirements of what they want to do, but they don’t often know how to bring it to life until you sketch something out.
However, working on complex topics can be intimidating, especially to get started or to make sense of things.
This is why you should rely on hypotheses: it’s a bite-sized, standardized way of breaking down the unknown into something that you can design around, and it’s a way of ensuring that you have clear ideas on how to advance your design.
So, if you’re facing what seems to be an impossible task or one in a complex field, try creating a hypothesis. It can not only help you figure out how to make sense of unknowns, but it can also help you design more efficiently.
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