Goal
Students will develop the skills and understandings to get at some of the deeper insights.Duration
20 min
Group Size
Small Groups 2-4
What is it?
Why laddering is an exercise in helping students get to the deeper insights and underlying issues of a given challenge.Students will meet with their subject, take what they feel are their most valuable insights, and proceed to continually ask why until they get to some deeper understandings….
Why do we do it?
As a general rule, asking ‘why’ tends to yield more abstract statements and asking ‘how’ gets you more specific ones. Often times abstract statements are more meaningful but not as directly actionable, and the opposite is true of more specific statements. That is why you ask ‘why?’ often during interviews – in order to get toward more meaningful feelings from users rather than specific likes and dislikes, and surface layer answers.
When you think about the needs of someone, you can use why-how laddering to flesh out a number of needs, and find a middle stratum of needs that are both meaningful and actionable.
How to why-how ladder?
When considering the needs of your user, start with one meaningful one.Write that need on the board and then ladder up from there by asking ‘why’. Ask why your user would have that need, and phrase the answer as a need. For example, “Why would she ‘need to see a link between a product and the natural process that created it’? Because she ‘needs to have confidence that something will not harm her health by understanding where it came from’.” Combine your observations and interviews with your intuition to identify that need. Then take that more abstract need and ask why again, to create another need.Write each on the board above the former. At a certain point you will reach a very abstract need, common to just about everyone, such as the ‘need to be healthy’. This is the top of that need hierarchy branch.You can also ask ‘how’ to develop more specific needs. Climb up (‘why?’) and down (how?) in branches to flesh out a set of needs for your user. You might come up to one need and then come back down. In the previous example, you climbed up to the ‘need to understand where a product came from’. Then ask ‘how’ to identify the ‘need to participate in the process of creating a product’. There will also be multiple answers to your ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ – branch out and write those down.
The result (after some editing and refining) is needs hierarchy that paints a full picture of your user or composite user. Alternatively, you can use this tool to hone in on one or two particularly salient needs.
Sample Lesson (15-20 min)
Materials: Pencil, Paper, Recording deviceInterviews 10 min:
Break students up into partners and give them a prompt to start the interview, ie How do you organize your binders and notebooks? Throughout the conversation, the interviewer will continually ask WHY. A sample conversation might go like this:
I: ‘How do you organize your binders and notebooks?’
P: ‘Well, I have a shared binder for Social Studies and English. I have a separate notebook for
Math.’
I: ‘Why?’
P: ‘Well, I get a lot of handouts in Social Studies and English so it’s important to have a binder
where I can add and remove pages. My Math notebook is small so I can take it with me
everywhere in case I have an idea to jot down. I guess I also think English and Social Studies
sort of fit together.’
I: ‘Why?’
P: ‘Well I sometimes think of these things as all happening in the past. I haven’t been exposed to as much
current day events.’
I: ‘Why?’
P: ‘Well, I guess sometimes the news is so negative that I choose to block it out.’
I: ‘Why?’
P: ‘I think I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the scope of the challenges we face and it’s hard for me to
know how I can play a role.’
The kinds of responses from this exercise tend to go deep and be much more philosophical, emotional and
social. These sample responses might inspire Ideas like an on-line new search that prioritizes only articles
on certain subjects. Give each student 5 minutes to interview the other.
D.Brief (5-10 min)
Ask students a combination of the following questions:
1. What did you learn about your partner?
2. What surprised you?
3. What would you have missed if you hadn't asked why?
4. Why do you think this is an important tool for building empathy and gaining deeper insights?
