Looking at a bigger picture together with the team, while solving problems, adds a strong motive to the process.The journey to problem solving is adventurous. (Freepik)Whether you are a designer, a product owner/manager or an engineer, you must have come across a problem-solving format of a question “How might we” (HMW). This concept of HMW was introduced in the 1971 by Procter & Gamble (P&G) and then adopted by IDEO which gained traction with the boom of Design Thinking by organisations across the world.The How might we is a concise, human-centered question format used to reframe problems as opportunities for innovation using creative ideas. Instead of jumping to favourite solutions from individuals or teams, HMW fosters collaboration and focus on user needs, while generating a broad range of potential solutions.HMW is a powerful tool for exploring solutions once the problem is well-understood and the context is clear. When the foundation is shaky, it can lead to wasted effort and irrelevant ideas. It’s not a magic bullet for fixing poorly defined problems or overcoming organizational constraints.So, what can be the possible alternative to this? Consider working in an agile environment where we have Epics broken down into Stories so that it becomes easier for the team to understand, develop and deliver a feature as a part of smaller chunks. Now, if we apply the same concept to problem-solving scenarios, we realise that HMW is a subset, like a story, of a bigger picture (problem), like Epic!Let us create a scenario. The sales team has come up with a problem, “Usage of our AI bot is low”. Research teams get to the discovery phase in exploring the possible problem space around the low usage. They discuss and deliver the top findings with the team. The team is tasked to frame design challenges to generate possible solutions using HMW.Now, there are several nuances and dependencies on creating successful HMW statements. Any issue in any of the foundation pillars might render this exercise unfruitful. There could be issue in data (stale), top-suite pressure(just do it), too broad/narrow HMW, or anything that limits the resources or capabilities which won’t work beyond the constraints of HMW.Circling back to our Epic story relationship, we need a bigger picture to this. The problem from the sales team, “Usage of our AI bot is low”, generates the bigger picture, “Why should we increase the AI bot usage?”. This might seem counterintuitive, but “Why should we” (WSW) is the power of reverse engineering. This forces are brain to question the very existence of a feature which was delivered in past releases.The HMW statements are like fixing a hole in the boat through which water is coming in. The people trying to patch up the hole might not have the context of why this boat was even built?Holes in boat needs to be fixed in time. (Freepik)The WSW statement gives the vision, the purpose and the value that was delivered. “Why should we fix the hole”? “Because we built the boat to ferry weekend picnickers to the park conveniently”. This statement provides the vision “ferrying from point A to B”, the purpose “ride to park” and the value “convenience”.This helps to reiterate and reinforce the motive of the task(s) we are about to accomplish through our HMW statement(s). Once we have the WSW statement, we could break this down onto smaller HMW statements:How might we rapidly and effectively seal the hole to prevent the boat from capsizing?How might we ensure the safety of everyone on board while addressing the hole in the boat?How might we utilize the materials and tools available to us to fix the hole and stabilize the boat?How might we implement a temporary fix for the hole that allows us to reach safety or a more permanent solution?How might we learn from this incident and implement measures to prevent similar damage to the boat in the future?So, we took a step back from fixing the hole, gained a perspective of the bigger picture (the boat), and then brought our focus back on to the hole. Looking at our earlier scenario of “Why should we increase the AI bot usage?”, we have to have the answer for why the AI bot was built? Because AI bot aimed at enhancing customer experience, improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, gaining valuable insights, and staying competitive in an increasingly digital world.This gives us vision, purpose and value of the AI bot in the organisation and we can now break it into HMW statements using it:How might we make users more aware of the existence and capabilities of our AI chatbot?How might we demonstrate the value and benefits of using our AI chatbot to users?How might we make interacting with our AI chatbot more intuitive and user-friendly?How might we tailor the AI chatbot’s language and communication style to better resonate with different linguistic user groups across geographies?How might we actively gather user feedback on their experience with the AI chatbot and use it to drive improvements?This not only will help us fix the problem, but will help in avoiding such issues in future, cater to broader untapped user needs, and make the product more reliable and robust.To summarise this, the principle of asking “Why?” before “How?” is strongly supported by established problem-solving methodologies like 5 whys, Why-How Laddering, and even Basadur’s original HMW process at P&G involved asking “Why” to broaden possibilities before framing the HMW question!From ‘How might we?’ to ‘Why should we?’ was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.