Problem Definition, the Abstraction Ladder, and the Five Whys (Design Course 2.1)

After sensing the gap, the first step in the design process is to define the problem. I like to think of problem definition in two parts. First, I like to create a single statement that captures the scope of the gap that you're trying to address. And then I like to develop a more detailed set of

user needs that relate to the problem. We're going to talk now about that first piece. That is about creating a single statement that characterizes the scope of the problem you're trying to solve. Let's take the example of the ice cream scoop. Now, if we just say design a better ice cream scoop, that carries

with it all kinds of assumptions about the solution that were that we're going to develop. We've talked about a scoop. Well, scoop implies a geometry. It implies perhaps an action of the user's hand. It even implies that we're going to be holding something in our hand. And maybe we don't want to make all those assumptions about the

solution. Maybe we want to think more broadly about the problem that we're we're trying to solve. And so, I recommend that we go through a deliberate process in which we take the initial problem statement like design a better ice cream scoop, and we systematically consider whether we might generalize that statement or possibly

make it more specific. As a first step, I like to characterize the the problem statement in some in terms that are more neutral about the form of the solution. So, for instance, we might instead of saying design a a better ice cream scoop, we might say, "How do we create a better handheld tool

for forming balls of ice cream from a bulk container?" And now we are making an assumption when we say that that the tool would be held in the hand, but we aren't making any assumption about the mechanism by which we might form the ball. We are making an assumption that we're after a ball,