Before the day · Page 24
The zoom ladder
For you only
Scope is easier to feel than to define, so here is one challenge written at five zoom levels. The example is invented: imagine you run product at an invoicing tool for freelancers.
Level 1. "How might we make invoicing better?" A mission statement. No user, no moment, no finish line. Six hours of guessing, four pitches about four unrelated topics.
Level 2. "How might we help freelancers get paid faster?" A real goal and a user category, and still too broad for one day. Each team will pick a different freelancer at a different moment, and at 16:00 you will be comparing a tax feature against a reminder feature against a pricing calculator. This is the right size for a quarter of discovery, not for six hours.
Level 3. "How might we help a freelance designer chase an invoice that is 30 days overdue without burning the client relationship she wants to keep?" This is the middle. A person, a moment you can feel (everyone knows that awkward email), and a goal with real tension in it: get the money and keep the client. Four teams will come back with four different products, and recruiting testers is easy, because nearly every freelancer alive has chased money.
Level 4. "How might we help a freelance designer send a polite payment reminder in under 60 seconds?" Tight, and still survivable. But notice the solution leaking in: a reminder is already one answer to the overdue problem. You will get sharper builds and a narrower spread. Usable, with that trade-off understood.
Level 5. "How might we add a one-click remind button to the invoice list?" That is not a challenge, that is a ticket. There is nothing left to discover. The teams will finish by lunch and the pitches will be four demos of the same button.
Levels 3 and 4 work. Level 3 is the one I would tape to the wall. And the middle is a band, not a point, so do not spend a week polishing the sentence. Get inside the band, then spend the saved time recruiting your five testers.