magnus919_agent-skills/product-discovery/references/question-patterns.md

Question Patterns for Discovery Interviews

Core Principle

Closed questions confirm what you already think. Open questions discover what you didn't know to ask.

Rule of thumb: If the answer can be "yes" or "no," you're validating, not discovering.

Question Pattern Catalog

Story-Eliciting (highest signal density)

Pattern	Example	Why It Works
Tell me about a time	"Tell me about the last time this process broke down."	Grounds in real experience
Walk me through	"Walk me through what you do when a new request comes in."	Surfaces steps too obvious to mention
What happened next?	Follow-up to any story	Extends narrative past comfortable stopping point

Assumption-Surfacing

Pattern	Example	Why It Works
What would have to be true?	"For this to work, what would have to be true that isn't today?"	Exposes dependencies and preconditions
Pre-mortem	"It's a year from now and this failed completely. What went wrong?"	Surfaces risk without defensiveness
The opposite	"What would you do if we told you that approach won't work?"	Reveals real priorities
Five whys	Iterative "why" on any requirement	Traces surface want to root need

Laddering (Surface Want → Underlying Value)

1. Attribute: "What feature are you looking for?"
2. Functional consequence: "What would that let you do?"
3. Psychosocial consequence: "Why is being able to do that important?"
4. Instrumental value: "What does achieving that give you?"
5. Terminal value: "Deep down, why does that matter?"

Only ladder the 2-3 most important items. Don't ladder trivial features.

Contrast Questions

Pattern	Example
Difference	"How is this different from what you do today?"
Absence	"What would you do with unlimited resources?"
Negative space	"What would a bad solution look like to you?"

Validation Questions

Pattern	Example
Summarize and check	"Let me make sure I understand. You're saying [summary]. Is that right?"
Priority forcing	"If you could only solve one of those problems, which one?"
The disconfirming question	"What would prove this theory wrong?"

Anti-Patterns

Wrong	Right
"So you need a faster approval workflow?"	"Tell me about what happens when you need approval today."
"Would a mobile app solve that?"	"When this problem comes up, where are you?"
"Don't you think this is inefficient?"	"Walk me through the process."

The Question Stack Protocol

Design interviews as a stack from broad to narrow:

Level 1: Broad exploration — "Tell me about your work with [domain]."
Level 2: Problem discovery — "Tell me about a time things didn't work."
Level 3: Deepening — "Why does that matter?" (repeat as ladder)
Level 4: Assumption testing — "What would have to be true for that to work?"
Level 5: Validation — "Let me summarize what I'm hearing..."

Move down only when current level stops producing novel information.

Socratic Questioning (6 Types)

From the Socratic method, six systematic categories for disciplined inquiry:

Type 1 — Clarification: "What exactly do you mean by 'better'?" / "When you say 'slow,' what threshold?" / "Help me understand the distinction you're drawing."

Type 2 — Probing Assumptions: "What are you assuming about the user's willingness to change?" / "Is this always the case, or only in certain situations?" / "What would need to be different for that assumption to be false?"

Type 3 — Probing Evidence: "What evidence do you have that this is the actual cause?" / "How do you know this is a widespread issue vs. isolated complaints?"

Type 4 — Alternative Perspectives: "How would customer support describe this problem differently?" / "Who benefits from keeping things as they are?" / "Is there another way to interpret this?"

Type 5 — Implications: "If we build this, what else changes downstream?" / "And then what happens?" / "What are the second-order effects of solving it this way?"

Type 6 — Meta-Questions: "Why are we asking about this feature instead of that one?" / "Whose question are we really trying to answer?" / "Is this the right question to be asking?"

Tacit Knowledge Extraction

Stakeholders know more than they can tell. These techniques surface what they do automatically:

Master-Apprentice: "Pretend I'm the new person. Walk me through how you handle a typical escalation." "What took you the longest to learn that you now do automatically?"

Think-Aloud: "As you go through this process, please narrate what you're thinking." "What cue made you decide to do that step?"

Critical Incident: "Tell me about the most difficult case you handled last month." "Describe the last time you had to work around the system because it couldn't do what you needed."

Artifact Walkthrough: "Show me your system and walk me through what you do." "What's that spreadsheet you keep open that isn't part of the official system?"

Interview Protocol Design

Structure interviews as a phased progression:

Phase	Duration	Question Types	Goal
Warm-up	5 min	Context: "Tell me about your role"	Build rapport
Walkthrough	15 min	Process: "Walk me through yesterday"	Observe actual workflow
Pain points	15 min	Incident: "Last time it broke"	Surface tacit knowledge
Latent needs	10 min	Laddering: "Why does that matter?"	Surface underlying need
Assumption check	5 min	Socratic: "What would have to be true?"	Test assumptions
Close	5 min	Meta: "What did I not ask?"	Capture blind spots

Sources

• The Mom Test (Fitzpatrick) — past behavior over hypotheticals
• Laddering — Reynolds & Gutman (1988), Means-End Chain theory
• Socratic questioning — Paul & Elder (2006)
• Pre-mortem — Klein (2007)
• "What Would Have to Be True" — Lafley & Martin, Playing to Win
• Tacit knowledge extraction — Beyer & Holtzblatt, Contextual Design