59 Questions for Mindful

UX Design
By This Too Shall Grow
“Conduct dark reality sessions: The ancient Greek philosopher
Socrates used a series of questions to gradually uncover the
invalidity of people’s beliefs. In a very similar way, we can uncover
the assumptions and potential disastrous consequences of our
concepts in a ‘Dark Reality’ session, a form of speculative design
that focuses on stress-testing a concept with challenging
questions.”

Lennart Overkamp in “Daily Ethical Design”

How does it work?
This list of questions aims at mitigating risks, improving the status
quo, and knowing how to react when a problem does arise.

You can go through it alone or with your design/product team, for

instance with each person giving at least 1 answer to each
question. If possible, find a facilitator who is outside your team.

I hope this tool helps us stay accountable and question our

practice further. If you use it, please let me know!
 First questions to ask
● What would you dislike about being a user
of this product?
● What’s the worst scenario that could
happen because of this product?
● Are you OK with your loved ones knowing
you worked on this?
● Are you OK with the users knowing you
worked on this?
59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow
● What is driving this decision?
● In which ways could this be in contradiction
with your values? With the company’s values?
With the team’s values?
● Would it be acceptable if this was an
interaction from human to human, instead of
via a device?
● How could your metrics be damaging
people’s experience with the product?
 Society
● What’s the worst thing that could happen if
you increased your user base tenfold?
● In which ways could your product be
different in 1 year? 5 years?
● In which ways might your users want to
interact differently with your product in 1
year? 5 years?
● How could your product better encourage
critical thinking?
59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow
● What messages are you sending?
● If the inhabitants of a given area were all
using your product, how would it impact their
community?
● In which ways could your product be
detrimental to people's relationships with
other users?
● In which ways could your product be
detrimental to people's relationships with
non-users?
 Transparency

● In which ways could your product be ● How could your copy better manage people’s
misleading? expectations?
● How would people’s behaviour be different ● How could your copy better support people’s
if they better understood the consequences current task?
of their choices? ● How could your copy be more
● How would people’s behaviour be different explicit/transparent?
if they better understood how their data is
processed?
● In which ways could your product play on
people’s fears, insecurities, or weaknesses?

59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow

 Wellness - part 1
● What habits are you encouraging?
● In which ways could your product be
detrimental people’s mental health?
● In which ways could your product be
detrimental people’s quality of life?
● In which ways could your product be
distracting?
● How could your product better protect
people’s time and attention?
59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow
● How could your product better foster active
use and supportive relationships between
people?
● How could your product better encourage
physical activity?
● How could your product be more relaxing?
Less anxiety-inducing?
 Wellness - part 2
● How could your product better prevent
information and cognitive overload?
● How could your product take more steps in
being non-addictive?
● How could your error messages better
guide users to accomplish their task?
● How could your error design be less
frustrating?
59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow
● How could your information architecture be
simplified?
● On a given page, in which ways could the
CTAs compete with each other?
● In which ways could your product be
confusing or unclear?
● In which ways could your product
overwhelming?
 Care - part 1
● Who benefits from this product?
● Who could this product be detrimental to?
● Who is forgotten or excluded by this
product?
● In which ways could your product be
unsafe?
● If you were a user, in which ways could this
product harm you?
59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow
● How could your product enable people with
harmful intents?
● How could your product dissuade people with
harmful intents?
● In which ways could your product be
detrimental to people’s privacy?
● In which ways could your product be
detrimental to people’s safety?
 Care - part 2

● How could your product better handle any
information that could harm people if it got
into the wrong hands?
● In which ways is your product
non-accessible?
● In which ways is your product
non-inclusive?
● How could your product be a safer online
space for people with specific triggers?
● How could your product be a safer online
space for socially marginalised individuals
and communities?

59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow

 Social

● How could you encourage respect between Ask those questions for each of the following:
users?
● Doxing
● How could you better take users’ feedback
● Stalking
into account?
● Identity thief
3 important questions for the list on the right: ● Disinformation
● Online harassment
● What happens to the person who broke the
● Hate speech, whether towards an individual
rule?
or a community
● What happens to the victim, if any?
● How could you better prevent it?

59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow

 And the ultimate question...

● For each solution you come up with during

this exercise: how could it backfire?

59 Questions for Mindful UX Design • Made by This Too Shall Grow

Good luck!
For more information, you can check the
article: 59 Questions for Mindful UX Design.

By This Too Shall Grow