Reframe the Challenge

Make a high-level design challenge more specific and actionable

The Reframe the Challenge method helps a team make a design challenge more specific and actionable by articulating what user groups, experiences, and constraints exist.
Once articulated, the team can prioritize which target user, experience and constraints to focus on. This exercise is critical for a team to discover the right problem to solve.

GOAL

Translate a high-level challenge into a specific and actionable design challenge.

PARTICIPANTS

Designers, Business Leads

TIME NEEDED

30 minutes

PHASE

Discover

Before You Start

You Have Identified Use Case Ideas with Business Impact
It is best to start the reframing exercise with a prioritized list of use case ideas that can help to solve identified business challenges. Such a list will be the result of the Use Case Exploration Workshop. Therefore we recommend to have that workshop before starting to reframe the challenge:

Use Case Exploration Workshop

Materials you will need

Templates for Download

Templates for Virtual Collaboration

(Registration to MURAL is required)

Steps

Reframing the challenge includes several steps. We recommend completing them in one session.
  • 10 minutes

Brainstorm for each aspect of your challenge

Do a silent brainstorm for each aspect of your challenge. Think about how you could narrow down the topic or challenge to an experience, user group(s), and constraints.

Participants should be instructed to look at the challenge from different angles, express their understanding of the focus, and open up to other interpretations.

  • 10 minutes

Share your ideas with the group

Together, cluster ideas by experience, user group, and constraint based on similarity. Once you cluster the ideas, decide on one cluster to be the final one based on priority and impact.

  • 5 minutes

Review the previous step's results

Take another 5 minutes for participants to review the responses and ask questions for clarification.

  • 5 minutes

Define the final challenge

Define the final challenge based on your team’s clustering and prioritization.

You're done!

You have a reframed challenge and are ready for the next step, which is recommended to be engaging in user research, preferably on the customer site, utilizing our Field Research Guide.