How many times have you found yourself creating a solution to a problem that didn’t exist? A well-framed problem is the key to a successful solution. Even a slight adjustment in how you look at a problem can lead to a completely different outcome. In this series of posts, we share several of our tried and true methods for helping teams frame problems to show you how to achieve true innovation by drawing backwards. 

How many times have you found yourself creating a solution to a problem that didn’t exist? 

A well-framed problem is the key to a successful solution. Even a slight adjustment in how you look at a problem can lead to a completely different outcome. 

This is Part 3 in our series of posts sharing several of our tried and true methods for helping teams frame problems. Read [Part 1](https://drawbackwards.com/blog/problem-framing-identify-the-obstacles-in-your-way "Part 1") and [Part 2](https://drawbackwards.com/blog/problem-framing-gain-a-new-perspective "Part 2"). 

## Refresh Your Solutions from a New Perspective

Think of a digital app or product you use every day. For most, this could be something like email or a calendar. Now think of the last time that app or product introduced a change in the user interface or experience that fundamentally affected how you use it. 

Usually, if you can remember the change it was probably uncomfortable or frustrating. It forced you to learn something new or recalibrate where to find certain functionality or content.

We don’t notice changes to our everyday experiences because they’re so small and micro that they don’t register on our radar. When done well, a change to a product or service mimics this incremental change by anticipating how to make our lives better and easier almost without us even noticing it. 

Most of the time, however, core functionality doesn’t ever change because product teams don’t know how (or are afraid to try) to improve an existing process. They fall into the “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” trap, or they simply don’t have time to fix known problems because they’re too busy creating new features.

If your team is stuck trying to uncover ways to refresh your product experience, it may be time to revisit how your original problems have changed over time. This is where it can be helpful to update your old journey maps, service blueprints, and process maps (or build new ones). 

Explore the actions, thoughts, and emotions internal and external users experience around your product or service today and compare it to how you understood that in the past. Update your vision of what a typical day looks like for them. 

What do your most loyal and frequent users need? How have they devised their own shortcuts to get through a repetitive process faster? How would they feel if you introduced something that changed that shortcut for them? 

Keep in mind it’s important to explore not only the user journey from Point A to Point B through a specific task but also how that task experience has changed through repetition. There may be things in that process they don’t want to change. Just because you think it’s a good solution to a problem doesn’t mean your users want to go through the frustration of changing their habits to fit your new feature.

Investing time to align on a refreshed mental model of the user journey can lead to better solutions for your most loyal users. It can also lead to solutions that are more inclusive for all users. You’re able to use the experience of established users to better anticipate how the needs of new users will evolve over time.

If you and your team are looking for ways to refine your user experience, we can help. [Let’s talk](https://drawbackwards.com/contact "Let's Talk") about how to update your user journeys and build solutions that will evolve with user needs over time.


Framing UX Problems

Problem Framing: Re-Map Your Users’ Journey

Have you ever shopped for a certain model of car and then started seeing it everywhere? Or maybe you learned a new word and suddenly it’s popping out of mouths left and right. 

This is known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or, in simpler terms, [frequency illusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion "frequency illusion"). It’s a form of selection bias that tricks our brains into thinking that something we learn about is suddenly appearing everywhere out of the blue. In reality, you’re not seeing more cars of a certain model. You’re putting a mental frame around those cars that causes you to notice them more often.

So, what does that have to do with product development? 

Let’s say you have a big internal stakeholder or client asking for a solution to a big problem. You’ve done your due diligence and [identified the root cause of the problem](https://drawbackwards.com/blog/treat-the-cause-not-the-symptoms "identified the root cause of the problem") so you don’t waste time with temporary band-aids. This root cause reminds you of other projects you’ve worked on, so you’re already brimming with ideas of how to solve it.

But there’s one more step you need to take before jumping into a solution - and that step is backwards. 

Our brains are great at tricking us. That's why we need to be crafty about getting around those tricks. We need to make sure we’re not only seeing what our brains want us to see. Investing time upfront to frame (or reframe) a problem can lead to better solutions.

In a series of posts this month, we’ll walk through several of our tried and true methods for problem framing:

Identify the Obstacles in Your Way
Gain a New Perspective 
Re-Map Your Users’ Journey

These exercises are just a sampling of options when it comes to problem framing.  But they’ll give you a sense of how true innovation comes from drawing backwards. Sometimes you need help seeing the problem for what it really is, and not what you think it might be.

How to (Re)Frame Your Problems to Find the Right Solutions

How many times have you found yourself creating a solution to a problem that didn’t exist? 

A well-framed problem is the key to a successful solution. Even a slight adjustment in how you look at a problem can lead to a completely different outcome. 

This is Part 1 in our series of posts sharing several of our tried and true methods for helping teams frame problems. 

## The Speed Boat Exercise

The first step in effective problem solving is to recognize the obstacles in your way. We often have blind spots, individually and as teams, that prevent us from seeing all the things that are preventing us from achieving our goals. The speed boat exercise is designed to help with that.

It starts, of course, with a speed boat. This is your means for getting across the water - in other words, your product or service. There are several things both attached to the boat, and in its immediate environment, that either help or hurt its progress in reaching the island - your goal. 

There are many ways to structure this exercise, but here’s how we usually break it down:

__The Boat:__ Your initiative, project, product, or service. It’s important for the team to agree on what should be the focus of the exercise and to give it a clear name.

__The Island:__ Your goal. What does success look like for the boat? It’s best if this can be clearly stated as a single goal, but you might have a few things that need to fit on your island.

__The Sails or Motor:__ Your propellants. What is working for you and helping you move toward your goal? This could include environmental factors that come and go (like the wind in your sails), external resources (like the gas in your engine), other teams and support (like rowers on the boat), or your own internal motivations and skills (your engine).

__The Anchors:__ Your dead weight. What is dragging you down and preventing you from moving forward? Maybe you set an anchor for a good reason to pause and get your bearings, but you have to remember to pull those anchors back up before you fire up the engines.

__The Waves:__ Your outside obstacles. What are the obstacles the boat will need to overcome? These are the external environmental factors that you may or may not be able to control but which you can’t avoid on your path to the island.

![Speed Boat Exercise@2x](//images.ctfassets.net/6ygji0ixcksy/5gXM1jR9KJpAPrBAQ3sXYQ/32a8b35a5bcc10fc9ea23ec7406772bb/Exercise_2x.png)

The beauty of this exercise is that you can customize it for any situation. As a team, you identify the name of your boat and the island and brainstorm the other elements so everybody has clarity and a shared vision of the path ahead. You can even ask the team to estimate how much faster the boat would go if the anchors and waves were gone, or if the sails or motor were more efficient. 

As you go through the exercise you’ll start to see recurring themes. You’ll also have revelations and insights as you see things you never considered before. But it’s important to remember this isn’t supposed to be a gripe session. The purpose of this activity is to get a new perspective that inspires and empowers the team to create a better way around their challenges.

We’ve used the speed boat exercise with many clients across a wide variety of contexts. It almost never fails to help resolve conflicts over what solution is most urgent or which direction is the right way forward. This simple exercise can help you get clarity on the real problems you need to solve. 

This is just one part of our comprehensive design thinking process for building meaningful experiences. [Let’s talk about how we can work together](https://drawbackwards.com/contact "Let’s talk about how we can work together") to get your team unstuck and back on the path toward your goals.


Problem Framing: Identify the Obstacles in Your Way

How many times have you found yourself creating a solution to a problem that didn’t exist? 

A well-framed problem is the key to a successful solution. Even a slight adjustment in how you look at a problem can lead to a completely different outcome. 

This is Part 2 in our series of posts sharing several of our tried and true methods for helping teams frame problems. Read [Part 1](https://drawbackwards.com/blog/problem-framing-identify-the-obstacles-in-your-way "Part 1").

## The Powers of Ten Exercise
We often talk about taking a step back to get a new perspective, but we don’t often talk about how exactly to do that. 

We all have those random moments in the shower, on a run, while doing the dishes, or driving a long distance when a powerful new insight suddenly pops into our brain. Why does this always seem to happen when we’re doing the most mundane tasks?

These moments of inspiration and creativity might feel random, but “shower thoughts” are a [product of a specific process in our brains](https://www.wired.com/2014/08/shower-thoughts/ "product of a specific process in our brains"). Basically, we get our best ideas when our brains are flooded with dopamine triggered by routine and comforting activities like exercising or listening to music. In these moments, we’re able to get out of our linear thinking process and allow ideas that are usually isolated to randomly collide together in new ways.

When we’re working on a problem, we often get stuck in a rut as we fixate on a couple of specific strategies or perspectives. If we can take a break and release ourselves from thinking about a problem a certain way, we have a better chance to make new connections outside of those ruts. 

So, how can we harness the power of free association to reframe problems for our products and solutions?

One way is with the Powers of Ten technique based on a [popular short film](https://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/powers-of-ten/ "popular short film") created by Charles and Ray Eames in 1977. The film shows a close-up of a picnic in Chicago from one meter away, then zooms out to reveal the edge of the known universe, and back in again to the level of an atom. 

Teams often get hung up on viewing a problem at a particular level and forget to consider what various magnitudes can look like. They’ll be head’s down and forget to think about the view from above.

The Powers of Ten technique encourages you and your team to explore a current problem on a scale. The scale can be anything that fits the circumstance - distance, time, size, cost, complexity, or even more abstract concepts. Once you’ve chosen a scale, you can explore it from different levels of magnitude. 

As you zoom in and out of the problem, patterns will begin to emerge and repeat at different levels of the scale. You’ll start to gain a new point of view or perspective on the problem. New ideas will collide and you’ll begin to settle on the right level at which to frame the problem. 

While this exercise may seem straightforward and simple, there’s a lot behind it. The problems we face in designing products and solutions are part of a larger system. We can’t design a solution to one problem in isolation from the larger or smaller issues that go along with it. We need to be able to consider both the granular and larger contexts in which our designs fit.

The point of this exercise is not to get frozen by the levels of complexity. Rather, we want to use the Powers of Ten technique to identify the right level at which we think we can make the biggest difference. It helps us get out of our linear thinking and into a free association mindset to foster an accidental collision of new ideas for innovative solutions. 

We know the way to help unlock your team’s creativity. [Let’s talk](https://drawbackwards.com/contact "Let's talk") about how we can help you get a new perspective on your existing problems.


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Framing UX Problems

How to (Re)Frame Your Problems to Find the Right Solutions

Problem Framing: Identify the Obstacles in Your Way

Problem Framing: Gain a New Perspective

Problem Framing: Re-Map Your Users’ Journey

Framing UX Problems

How to (Re)Frame Your Problems to Find the Right Solutions

Problem Framing: Identify the Obstacles in Your Way

Problem Framing: Gain a New Perspective

Problem Framing: Re-Map Your Users’ Journey

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