HMW Questions: From Research Insights to Design Ideas

HMW questions reframe user research insights as open-ended design challenges, ensuring ideation stays anchored to real problems rather than personal hunches. Design teams use them at the end of discovery to align on what was learned before brainstorming solutions. A well-crafted HMW is broad enough to invite diverse ideas yet specific enough to address the insight at hand. The classic footgun is smuggling a solution into the framing, such as asking how to tell users something when the real opportunity is making them feel confident.