Albert Einstein once famously quipped, “You can’t solve problems at the same level of thinking that created them.” This week’s episode in our Design Sprint Short series – F-A-Qs or Facts – Assumptions – and Questions – attempts to help groups elevate their thinking to focus resources and efforts at solving the right problems. This activity helps get all of the different domain knowledge out of individuals’ heads and up on the wall to be shared and referenced by the team. It’s a critical step in the Design Sprint process because everyone needs to be working from the same set of information. For that reason we typically do this fairly early in the Understand Phase on Day 1.
The F-A-Qs activity helps a group acknowledge the inherent biases we each bring to the table making it easier to overcome them when necessary. These biases, when not properly acknowledged, can influence decisions and ultimately affect the group’s ability to solve the difficult problem. They can even cause the group to spend cycles trying to solve the wrong problem altogether!
This activity identifies the data we know, the data we don’t know, and what assumptions exist in the room.
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