Page 54 - Transforming an Idea Into a Business with Design Thinking

S tage 1: Understand Problem to Grasp Desirability ◾ 33

3. Customers:
a. Who are your customers?
b. Tell me more about your customers – are they both internal and

external?
c. What do these customers expect of you?
d. What are their biggest challenges?
e. What is the job that you are helping your customer do?
f. How else can your customers do their job if you did not provide the

product/service?
4. Challenges:
a. What are your biggest challenges?
b. Why are you facing these challenges?
c. How many of these challenges are related to organization?
d. How many of these challenges are related to processes?
e. How many of these challenges are related to technology?
5. Aspirations:
a. In an ideal world, how would you be doing your job?
b. What are the factors that you would like to maximize in your job?
c. How would you solve the challenges you identified earlier on?
6. Evoke stories throughout the interview:
a. Tell me about a time when … ?
i. Tell me about a time when things didn’t go as planned?
ii. Tell me about a time when things worked better than

expected?
7. Understand emotions:
a. How did you feel when this happened?
b. Tell me more about how you felt at that point?
8. Conclusion:
a. Thank the user for his/her time.
b. Tell the user about the next steps:
i. What you will do with all this information and when they can

expect to hear some progress on the research.
ii. You’ll be interviewing other users as well.
iii. You’ll be synthesizing this information.
iv. You’ll be coming back to them for validation.
v. You’ll be thinking about new ways to do things/solutions.
vi. You’ll be inviting them for their input on new solutions.
vii. You’ll be prototyping new solutions and sharing them with users

to get feedback.