Role
Design Lead
Team
Myself & Visual Designer
Type
Internal project
The questions in the kaleidoscope deck will help you to think outside the box. They are designed to disrupt commonly held patterns of thinking when designing products and services.
These questions can help you when you feel stuck on a problem at work, or when you are struggling to explain something. Use these questions on your own or as a discussion starter with your teammates.
The cards are organized into 4 suits based on the classic double diamond approach to design thinking. They can be used at any stage of product development to inspire user-centric thinking, define problems, challenge blockers, and ideate solutions.
I’ve long been a fan of tarot cards. Not because I believe they they can predict the future, but because they can help you to shift your thinking. By considering a problem side by side with a set of archetypes, your brain begins to view the problem through new lenses. I realized that the function of a tarot deck is similar to the job of consulting clients. For years I’ve seen my colleagues and mentors course correct the direction of a project by simply asking the right question at the right time.
As I interviewed my fellow designers I found that we all had little arsenals of questions we fell back on time and time again to help in different situations. Sometimes we borrow them from mentors, sometimes we adapt them from our evening rants over a glass of wine, we collect the ones that work best. This deck is a collection of those mind-opening questions. It’s a great resources for anyone feeling stuck during a creative project.
"I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is."
— "Deep Thought" in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Download the deck here.