Starbursting
Kickstarting products by harnessing the art of questioning.
Asking questions helps us have a deep understanding of the project and helps us align with stakeholders. The goal of this brainstorming activity is for people to come together to generate questions. It helps us create a new way to think about different ideas. It provides us with a direction to think about how we can align with stakeholders with a similar mindset.
Let’s understand Sarah’s daily life a bit better. Sarah is a UX designer, but she wants to understand what her product managers may propose as requirements. Before the meeting, she decides to prepare questions, to get a better context of the project.
There are many gaps when starting a new project :
- A lack of clarity on who will be a part of this project.
- Everyone may have their own views and may have a different perspective. For example, product managers would have different visions of the product whereas designers would have a slightly different image in mind.
- When and how does the UX team come into the picture and whether we as UX designers are getting the right understanding of what we are solving and the technical limitations.
How will this brainstorming activity help kickstart the project?
Generating ideas and pushing pixels are a small part of a designer’s daily routine. How will Starbursting help in the initial phases of the project?
- Questioning is the art of learning: Asking the right questions helps our understanding of a particular topic to be on a deeper level, far surpassing the temporary endorphins of a correct ‘answer.’ The right question at the right time can make a difference.
- Starbursting is a twist on brainstorming: This encourages team members to let their creative juices flow by asking questions, rather than searching for answers. It’s useful when we think of any new product idea, service, or feature set the team may want to pursue.
- Aligning everyone: This makes us as designers create a habit of asking questions. The first step for designers is to make sure that they are at the same level as their stakeholders. Asking questions will give more clarity on how they are imagining things.
- Generating more ideas: By delivering a framework for them to involve other stakeholders and start a discussion to discover things that may have gone unaddressed before.
Starbursting provides a framework for brainstorming exercises. However, the cons of this activity are that we can’t use this activity to generate specific solutions, create timelines, or set project goals.
How to Starburst a project?
A starbursting meeting is intended to generate not just one question for each point of the star, but many different questions. Once questions are generated (often 50 or more), the group sets to answer those questions.
When a lot of information starts pouring in, for example, when all the data points in the PRD are formulated, people might jump to conclusions. As a result, this can lead to premature solutioning with insufficient knowledge and not looking at the product holistically.
Questions asked can be simple and straightforward using interrogative words. There is no particular order on how to start asking questions. The idea is to start thinking about questions that are not answered yet.
What
Example: What are the top pain points of the user?
Why
Example: Why have our competitors not tried it already?
Who
Example: Who will work on this project?
How
Example: How will this project help our business?
When
Example: When is the right time to market the product?
Where
Example: Where can we get our first user set
Template
The center of the star will have the problem statement which you and your team would want to solve and the area surrounding it is your question board, where everyone places their questions. You can do this online on Figma or offline with sticky notes.
Creating a fun brainstorming session
- Collaboration among a diverse group of people: For the best results, people from different backgrounds have different takes on things. A group of people with diverse backgrounds help in creating a broader thought process. For example, people with a design background would think more about the users and their experiences. Engineering would think about how to support all the features, and the product team would think about the requirements and features.
- Pre-planning the activity: Before starting this activity, everyone should be aligned with the problem statement beforehand. This way, they will have some time to think about the problem beforehand in their mind before the activity begins.
- Making sure no one is leading the conversation: It is essential to ensure that there is no single voice dominating the discussion. This would keep all members equally involved.
- Taking breaks: It is a long brainstorming activity so you can divide the activity into two meetings: one for asking questions and the other for answering them. Providing breaks in between is essential so people don’t get too overwhelmed and start losing interest.
Huge Shoutout to Nupur vats and Sonalisa Patel for being a part of this initiative. Thank you Lavanya Gopalaswamy for helping write this blog and Supriya Rao for these beautiful illustrations.
