«The basis for Toyota’s scientific approach … by asking the question why five times, the nature of the problem is determined, the solution becomes clear» — Sakichi Toyoda.

I’m sure each of you has heard of this method. Its essence is to ask “Why” five times in succession to find the root cause. The method itself is incredibly simple, but what many people often forget is that it can be used in many different ways.

For example, in qualitative research we are always trying to find the root cause, «Why did the user do this and not that?» and the point of qualitative research is to use dialogue to find those root causes.

And no, in user research you don’t have to say “Why?” five times in a row, a strong researcher always approaches questions flexibly and adjusts to the respondent and introduces these questions very natively to the user describing their feelings, their emotions. And it’s important to understand that the 5WHY method doesn’t necessarily include exactly 5 why questions. Some people might be satisfied with 3, and some might not be satisfied with 6. The important thing is to always remember to be flexible.

5WHY method.

In addition to qualitative research, this is a good tool when you’re discussing problems within your product. Let’s say you want to understand why you have a low conversion rate for your next purchase. How do you figure out exactly what’s wrong? Apply the 5WHY method.

Let’s break it down with a subscription-based educational service as an example. You pay monthly for educational content.

Why did you cancel your subscription to the service?

«Because I researched what I needed, and I decided there was nothing else useful here».

Why did you decide that nothing else would be useful?

«Because I didn’t see any schedule or notification that there would be new videos coming out».

And why is it important for you to see a schedule?

«There are so many services like this, and it’s important to me to see and be able to choose the content I want to watch».

We can stop there. What did we learn?

The user didn’t renew his subscription because he didn’t have the ability to watch an upcoming event and didn’t have the ability to choose what was really relevant to him.

Now that we have a substantive understanding of the problem, we can sit down and think about how to solve it.

But, there’s one more nuance.

Don’t forget that there are a lot of users and it’s important to understand how common this problem is, as well as what other problems they have. We conduct interviews using the 5WHY method and select from them the most frequent problems. Once the list is generated — we think of a solution, prioritize and implement.

How do you look for a solution?

Always start with the problem. Once you have a list of problems, then you need to make a list of hypotheses to help solve that problem.

There are 2 of the easiest and most effective ways: see what your competitors have and brainstorms.

Look at your competitors.

There’s no point in describing much, I think everyone understands how to do it. But there is an important BUT.

Look for solutions not only from direct competitors, but also from those who solve the same problem you want to solve. Roughly speaking, answer yourself the question:

«My customer has problem A, where would they go to solve it if we didn’t have our service and that of our direct competitors?»

Identifying competitors who are solving the same problem as you is a very important process. Not only will it help you take a broader look at the problem, but it will also give you inspiration and thoughts on how you can solve the user’s problem.

Brainstorms.

Brainstorms are when you and your team get together and start thinking «unconstrained» about problems. The goal of Brainstorms is to generate more and better hypotheses.

Its main advantage is that you involve all members of your team from completely different areas: design, development, product, and sales. You get the broadest possible perspective on user experience, which goes a long way toward helping you find a lot of quality solutions.

If you’re interested, I can talk about how to have an effective brainstorming session in the next post.

Conclusions.

The 5WHY method is underestimated and rarely used. And in vain. It is a great way to generate qualitative hypotheses and identify acute problems of users.