The What If Framework

Or: How I learned to embrace limitless creativity

February 8th, 2024

An image with the word user at its center in an article about user centric design.

In a recent design review of a web application, our team faced a common yet daunting challenge: moving beyond our first visual concept. Now, anyone that has worked as a designer has dealt with this challenge, it's easy to feel like we're stuck in our first idea and pixel push slight iterations instead of rapidly exploring many ideas. As we sat in this review providing feedback I found myself thinking and suggesting the same thing over and over; what if we did X?

This approach, documented below, while not entirely new, optimizes the typical 'What if we tried this?' question into a powerful and structured tool an individual can use for creative exploration.

Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing the 'What If' Framework

For a designer working on a new concept, the idea is relatively simple:
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Create your first design concept on an artboard.
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Step away from the computer and your work for a few minutes.
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Review your design and write a list of statements that start with the phrase "What if …"
a. The goal is to document as many ideas as possible. No idea is too stupid, and nothing should be off-limits.
b. Start with the easy stuff, what if the columns were reversed, what if I swapped all the colors, what if I made it fullscreen, what if I broke the grid, what if I used a modal, what if it was a slider etc, etc etc. As with all things, this exercise will take practice, and I can't state this enough: there is no minimum number of statements, so write out as many statements as possible, dozens if not hundreds.
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Back in your design file, create blank artboards for each "what if" statement.
a. Using the original design as a base, work on each artboard one by one, copying and pasting the original design into the new "what if" artboard to then create that concept.
b. This should now give the designer dozens if not hundreds of ideas, so many that it might be overwhelming, but that's sort of the point.
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Step away from the computer again for a few minutes.
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When you come back, review all the artboards and annotate what works and what doesn't with: great, good, and ok.
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Create a new set of artboards in a new file and start combining the great and good ideas in different compositions.
a. It's important to still not to be judgmental in this phase. Avoid thinking "this won't work" or "that's a bad idea".
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At this point, you should have enough ideas to get feedback, whether it's internal or external.
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As needed you SHOULD go back to step 3 and work through ideas recursively again, reducing the number of “what if” statements each time.
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Continue to get feedback both internally and externally until you feel you've created something amazing.

Design can feel like a never ending process, so it's important to acknowledge when we feel stuck or blocked and leverage tools that encourage the creation of a lot of ideas. By periodically stepping back to review our work and documenting a list of "what if" statements as a text document, a designer can free themself from feeling stuck staring at a computer screen.

The 'What If' framework not only helps to unblock a stuck designer but also paves the way for groundbreaking innovation. It's an invitation to designers to explore the uncharted territories of their creativity.
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The What If Framework

Or: How I learned to embrace limitless creativity

Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing the 'What If' Framework

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