A list of questions, I refined over the years, that help me in unpacking a problem. I use it at the start of every project to understand the problem better. I encourage my team also to deep-dive into the problem and understand it from various points of view before. I call this as problem-space analysis.

You can fork this as a template on Notion

🎞 Scenario

What triggered this project / idea? Is it in reaction to something that happened or in prevention of something in the future? Provide background context.

👤 Who is the user? What are they trying to do?

Describe the persona / archetype who is involved in this scenario and what are they trying to get done.

😫 What is the pain?

Describe the specific pain-points for both the user and the business. (functional and emotional pain)

🛣 When do they experience this pain?

Describe at what point in the user-journey / workflow does this pain occur? What are the triggers?

🔬 How did you know about the pain?

Describe how this observation was made - assumption, primary research, support tickets, analytics etc.

⛰ How big is the pain?

Quantify the pain. And, how does this affect the business?

Pain analysis: Look at all the triggers and assess the pain at each touch point.

🤕 What is the current way of addressing this pain?

What do people do to address the pain, currently? Do they know that it is a pain? Do they satisfice? Is it how things are? (Is this the way the system works and they can't do anything about it)

✴️ Why did this problem arise in the first place?

What causes this problem / pain to occur in the first place? What are the forces at play? Are there any constraints / limitations of the system that causes this? What is your hypothesis on why this problem occurs?

💊 How are you addressing this pain?

Describe your approach in addressing this pain, at a high-level.

📈 How would you know if you solved for the pain?

What might occur if the solution were to be successful? And, how would these be measured?

🧤 If this is a reactive attempt - What can we do to catch this problem upstream, in the future?

Describe how you could prevent the problem from happening in the future? Is it possible to mitigate the problem from occurring altogether?

💵 Who is paying for this project? What are their goals?

Describe the business goals and motivations behind the team sponsoring this project.

🤔 Knowledge gaps

List all the gaps in knowledge that you have based on the above questions. Answer them through research.