“What were you trying to get done when you ran into this?”
From Jared Spool · Founder, UIE · usability researcher
Why it works
Jared Spool's central teaching is that usability is invisible until a task exposes it — users don't experience features, they experience whether they can accomplish what they came to do. A complaint about a button is rarely about the button; it's about a goal that got blocked. Shifting the question from the interface ('what's wrong with this screen?') to the intent ('what were you trying to get done?') relocates the conversation to the task, where the actual breakdown — wrong mental model, missing affordance, dead end — becomes observable instead of guessed at.
When to ask
During or right after a usability session, support escalation, or any moment a user reports that something is 'confusing' or 'broken'. Use it before you start diagnosing the interface.
Good follow-ups
- At what exact point did it stop working the way you expected?
- What did you expect to happen instead?
- How did you eventually get it done — or did you give up?
Watch out for
Accepting the user's proposed fix as the requirement. They will often jump straight to a solution ('you need a dropdown here'); thank them, but route back to the task and the goal behind it — the right fix is usually different from the one a frustrated user invents mid-task.
Where to ask
- Support chatgreat
Perfect in the moment — a user reporting something 'broken' is right at the blocked task, so the goal behind it is still recoverable.
- User interviewgreat
Strong in a usability session: relocates a complaint about the screen to the task, where the real breakdown becomes observable.
- In-product surveyworkable
Works as targeted intercept after a friction event; the slight reword keeps it task-focused without a moderator to redirect a proposed fix.
Reworded for this context: “What were you trying to get done when this got in your way?”
Available as a ready-made survey: Usage milestone celebration + survey
Stage: Get value · A question popularized by Jared Spool