Step 1: Start with WHY

Getting to the core of WHY you're looking to create what you ultimately create is the most critical factor. It's not what you build but WHY you do it. Asking yourself WHY is how you explain your purpose and the reason you exist and behave as you do. WHY is the purpose, cause or belief behind WHAT you ultimately do. See the following image from Simon Sinek's TED Talk and book "Start With Why":

While in the image, he is referencing the organization as a whole, the same exists when you think in the context of the experience you're looking to design and build for the consumer of it, and identifying WHY you are creating it in the first place will enable you to design an experience that truly solves the need at hand. Ask yourself the following questions and make a bullet list:

1. WHY are you building this experience?
2. What’s the PURPOSE of it?
3. What’s the end GOAL?
4. What is the desired outcome? (i.e are you looking for New Customers? To engage your community? To make sales? To team-building/have a social gathering?

Take a look at what I put down for this exercise while designing an experience (see the image typed out below):

Why:

• To provide a place of solace. + escape in busy city life
• Because there’s not a lot of green (concrete jungles) and in a lot of places it gets cold so there’s nowhere “outside” to go. Plus bad weather leads to no outside too.
• Why?-> because green nature, outdoor [influenced] spaces make people happier, kinder, and more creative
• Our purpose: to give people a space that makes them happier and more creative
• Desired outcomes: creative ideas, happiness, collaboration, socializing/bonding, inner peace

Next: Step 2: Ask Yourself HOW

Updated November 10, 2022 22:41