What's the Problem

I don’t seem to get enough of  “so what’s the problem?”

I was in a discussion with a web designer recently who was showing me the designs for one of the products he was working on. Apparently, the users were not aware that there was a section in the product in which they could download ready made reports. The sales group thought that the current product design wasn’t helping the users to get to the reports that they sought.

Fair enough, I thought -  “Users can’t get to the reports they are looking for”….and waited… er…. is there a discussion on how the users look up a report, any use cases, any preferred mode by which user accesses the reports. No not really – is the answer I get.. Thats all that the brief said.. and the sales like the new design. I can’t stop myself for asking so how and what did you design for if you didn’t actually know about the users and the challenges they face in retrieving the reports. Furthermore, how would anyone test the efficacy of the solution if there is really no measurable test that can be defined for it.

If the problem perhaps, was such that 5 times out of 10 when users search for a report they get a message “report not found” and hence cannot get to the reports they are looking for. At the very least, we could test it with the same set of search inputs and verify if the number is any different or the results “better” or design the products to give helpful hints on searching if no reports are found. In the absence of such crisply defined problem there was really no objective way to evaluate a solution.

In all fairness, the solution did look “better” than what they currently had but that was just my personal opinion. A proposed product design needs an objective way of proving that it  meets the needs of the user. However, to do so one needs to have a deeper understanding of the problem. I see the statement “Users cannot find the reports” as the conclusion, the often difficult bit is – Why is it that they cannot find the Report?  – The answer’s to this question will help define the problem ! .. So there we go again – Whats the Problem?