Effective, lasting solutions begin start with asking the right questions. Here are five questions no solution designer or problem solver can do without.

1. What problem am I trying to solve?

Brilliant solutions that meet the wrong need are useless. Developing a clear expression of the challenge faced, its constraints and opportunities, and your needs and preferences is an early stage essential for the solution designer.

2. What resources do I need to solve it?

Designed a clever solution without the means to implement it? Yeah, not so clever. Check what resources you have and secure those you might need. Working with these constraints is a big part of solution design.

3. Who do I need to collaborate with?

Think about what kind of team you’ll need to create, test, implement, and maintain your solution. Involve them from the beginning. Teams don’t function very well unless everyone knows they are on the team and why.

4. How will I prototype, test, and refine the solution?

Prototype: Build your ideas into something you can stress, strain, and break without real-world consequences. Each build-break-fix cycle will make your solution exponentially stronger.
Test: How can you make the prototype tests realistic as possible? The closer you come to real-world testing, the better the data and ideas your tests will be.
Refine: Look back at your problem, resources and collaborators. Has anything changed based on your prototype testing? Adjust as needed and prototype again.

5. What feedback will tell me how well my solution works?

When your solution goes live, how will you keep making it better? Who or what will provide feedback on how it performs in the wild? What do you need to do to convert that feedback into action? Good solutions are never finished and only complete when they include robust feedback loops.