Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

The Five Whys

When receiving user feedback, your first task is to find out what exactly the user is trying to achieve. Often, the solution to the user’s problem can be found without adding new functionality to your product.

One process you can use to find the root cause of a problem is “The Five Whys.” According to legend, this approach was originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Industries. It works pretty well when trying to find out what caused somebody to send in a particular feature request: you simply keep asking “why?” (or something along those lines that sounds a little less unfriendly) until you figure out what prompted your users to think they needed an additional feature. You don’t have to ask exactly five times. ...