Why asking questions is a vital part of growing as a designer
Design shouldn't be a leap of faith based on vague client needs
Asking questions is one of the basic skills that I've seen many designers fail to do.
Whether it's talking with your team about requirements or talking with interviewers, it's surprising how many designers stay silent when it's in their best interests to ask a question.
Trusting that your client or team has everything worked out and never following up will result in issues later on.
Your team doesn't know everything, and it’s foolish to assume they do.
Your job as a designer is to avoid your client's blind spots
The most important thing I've learned from over 12+ years in design is that your team doesn't have all the answers.
Sometimes, it's because they're experts, so simple questions novices have never occurred to them.
But more often, it's because they could be better communicators. In Articulating Design Decisions, Tom Greever highlights that communication is two-way. We must see that our stakeholders are human and who might be unable to express what they want.
Perhaps you've heard stakeholders saying, "It's like [X company], but we want to improve it." Or, "Yeah, we need to make that feature pop more."
When you encounter this, many designers make the mistake I used to early on in my career: I'd sit back, listen quietly, and sketch something out. However, working in startups has made me realize it doesn’t work.
If you don't ask questions to clarify the feedback, you'll waste your time 90 times out of 100.
No matter how skilled you are at sketching, asking questions clarifies things faster and helps you get to the heart of your team's needs.
“If I had only five minutes to chop down a tree or die, I’d spend the first 3 minutes sharpening my axe.” — Unknown
While I can't speak for everyone, designers I've talked to fail to ask questions for two main reasons:
You feel like you know most of this stuff, or your team has convinced you of that
You're afraid of interrupting the meeting, asking questions, and "Slowing everything down" while seeming stupid.
Here are two methods to address each of these reasons.
Get in touch with your curious 3-year-old self
My three-year-old is my mentor if I ever feel like I know it all. He asks a question like "Why is it dark outside?" and based on my explanation, he'll do one of two things:
Keep asking, "Why?" because it doesn't make sense
Go "Ohhhh," because he gets it
While you probably don't need to simplify things for your team to the level of a 3-year-old, techniques like the "Five Whys method" can help you uncover any flaws or questions with what you're currently encountering.
For example, consider your team discussing filtering options on the search results page. Tracing things back using the "Five Whys" method might uncover some interesting questions.
“We need the ability to provide users options to sort and filter.”
Why? “Because there are a lot of search results on the page, and it’s overwhelming users.
Why? Because the most common search results are generic enough to return tons of results…
We may only need to go partway back to see that there are some usability issues. Rather than putting a band-aid on a usability problem (e.g., sorting and filtering due to tons of search results), we can realize that perhaps there are underlying issues that are worth addressing.
Knowing the project's driving factors, for example, allows you to present it more confidently to your team when putting it in your design portfolio.
However, that doesn't help with the second reason. Perhaps you're intimidated by interrupting a meeting or "asking stupid questions." If you're feeling that fear, lean into providing a helpful service: summarize in your own words.
Learn what you need while seeming smarter than an AI
Despite what you might think, most people on your team don't understand everything about your product.
Whether an executive is trying to understand the overall impact or the Product team is trying to understand the technical details of Engineering, people sometimes need help understanding everything.
This is why AI-based tools, like Microsoft Co-pilot, with meeting summaries, are widely adopted across organizations. But you don’t need to invest in AI to gain that insight. You only need five magic words.
"So what I'm hearing is…"
If you're afraid of interrupting meetings and seeming stupid, the best approach is to raise your hand, say those five words, and summarize as best as you can in simple terms. For example:
Stakeholder: "Yeah, we need to make this feature pop more."
You: "So what I'm hearing is we need to emphasize this particular button or feature, and make it stand out from the rest of the home page."
When you do this, one of two things happens:
The stakeholder agrees with your summary, and you get the clarification you need
The stakeholder disagrees (usually with part of the summary) and provides clarification around that point
This summarization process doesn't just help you: it can often align your entire team's understanding of the subject, whether they publically acknowledge it or not.
Being able to help your business like this and learn enough to get started designing can help you contribute to your team's efficiency.
Design shouldn't be a leap of faith; it should be a logical progression
To become a great designer, tap into a novice’s perspective and ask questions.
Whether you try the product out for yourself or ask questions that may seem basic, doing this is in service of one idea: designing the best experience for all clients involved.
Yet, time and again, I see designers acting as black boxes, absorbing information but never asking questions. Not only does that make designing much more tedious, but it also doesn't help you grow.
Even if it's not perfect, or if it seems interrupting, being able to ask the right questions, especially early on, can save you a whole bunch of time and effort and be your understanding towards a better product.
So don't be afraid to ask questions: they're often the quickest way to gain understanding and create the user experience everyone wants.
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer and Creator of the Data and Design newsletter. His book, Data-Informed UX Design, provides 21 small changes you can make to your design process to leverage the power of data and design.