DEFINE THE PROBLEM STATEMENT IN UX DESIGN

Vishesh Tripathi
2 min readMay 1, 2021

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Identifying the problems facing users is one of the most important parts of UX design. However, although the study of the UX design process is crucial, some of your work still requires a small amount of “thought reading” about the user experience. This seems to contradict the rule of never making assumptions, but sometimes users just feel uncomfortable or don’t know how to accurately express their problem and how it affects them. In this reading, you will learn how to define silent pain points and use them to form a strong problem statement.

As a reminder, the pain point is any UX issue or friction that frustrates users and prevents them from getting what they need. Minimizing pain points can make users happy and encourage them to keep interacting with the product. So, how do UX designers find and define pain points?

The 5 Ws and H: who, what, when, where, why, and how

Who is experiencing the problem? Knowing your users and their background is key to creating successful solutions for them.

What is the pain point you want to solve? Identify the user’s pain points as early as possible, then you can answer the remaining questions and clarify the background of the pain points.

Where are users when they use the product? The user’s physical environment is important to your design.

When did the problem occur? Maybe after the long and tedious process is over, or something that happens every day. Knowing when a problem occurs can help you better understand how users feel.

Why is the problem important? Knowing how this problem affects your user’s experience and life will help to clarify the potential consequences.

How can users achieve their goals by using the product? Understanding how users achieve their goals allows you to map their user journey through the product.

To design a solution that suits the needs of users, you must understand the problem from their perspective. Think through 5 Ws and how to force you to write who the user is and describe the complete background of the problem from the user’s perspective.

The following example explains how to define a problem statement in UX Design

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Vishesh Tripathi
Vishesh Tripathi

Written by Vishesh Tripathi

Wearing four hats as a competitive programmer, Full Stack Developer , Machine Learning Enthusiast & UX Designer