What is the 5 Whys to explain?

Take a deep dive into 5 Whys with our course Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .

Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and General Electric, have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach, and design thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world, including Stanford d.school, Harvard, and MIT. What is design thinking, and why is it so popular and effective?

Design Thinking is not exclusive to designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced it. So, why call it Design Thinking? Well, that’s because design work processes help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, businesses, countries and lives. And that’s what makes it so special.

The overall goal of this design thinking course is to help you design better products, services, processes, strategies, spaces, architecture, and experiences. Design thinking helps you and your team develop practical and innovative solutions for your problems. It is a human-focused, prototype-driven, innovative design process. Through this course, you will develop a solid understanding of the fundamental phases and methods in design thinking, and you will learn how to implement your newfound knowledge in your professional work life. We will give you lots of examples; we will go into case studies, videos, and other useful material, all of which will help you dive further into design thinking. In fact, this course also includes exclusive video content that we've produced in partnership with design leaders like Alan Dix, William Hudson and Frank Spillers!

This course contains a series of practical exercises that build on one another to create a complete design thinking project. The exercises are optional, but you’ll get invaluable hands-on experience with the methods you encounter in this course if you complete them, because they will teach you to take your first steps as a design thinking practitioner. What’s equally important is you can use your work as a case study for your portfolio to showcase your abilities to future employers! A portfolio is essential if you want to step into or move ahead in a career in the world of human-centered design.

Design thinking methods and strategies belong at every level of the design process. However, design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. What’s special about design thinking is that designers and designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply these human-centered techniques in solving problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, and in our lives.

That means that design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees, freelancers, and business leaders. It’s for anyone who seeks to infuse an approach to innovation that is powerful, effective and broadly accessible, one that can be integrated into every level of an organization, product, or service so as to drive new alternatives for businesses and society.

You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you complete the course. You can highlight them on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website.

Quality Glossary Definition: Five whys

The five whys and five hows techniques constitute a questioning process designed to drill down into the details of a problem or a solution and peel away the layers of symptoms. The technique was originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda who stated that "by repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear."

The five whys are used for drilling down into a problem and the five hows are used to develop the details of a solution to a problem. Both are designed to bring clarity and refinement to a problem statement or a potential solution and get to the root cause or root solution.

Figure 1: Five Whys Process

When to Use

While both methods are techniques to expand the horizon of a team searching for answers, there are distinct uses for five whys and five hows. However, both of these two techniques force a team to develop a better and more detailed understanding of a problem or solution and will be helpful in the root cause analysis process.

• Use the five whys technique when you want to push a team investigating a problem to delve into more details of the root causes. The five whys can be used with brainstorming or the cause-and-effect diagram.
• Use the five hows technique to develop more details of a solution to a problem under consideration. The five hows can be used with brainstorming and a solution-focused cause-and-effect diagram.

How to Use

Materials needed: Chart paper and pen/markers.

1. Draw a box at the top of a piece of flip chart paper and clearly write down the problem or solution to be explored.
2. Below the statement box draw five lines in descending order.
3. Ask "why" or "how" five times and write the answers on the lines drawn from number one to five.
4. It may take less or more than five times to reach the root cause or solution. 

Five whys technique example

Five hows technique example

Five Whys and Five Hows Resources

You can also search articles, case studies, and publications for five whys and five hows resources.

Digging For The Root Cause [Six Sigma Forum Magazine] Six Sigma training covers five popular identification tools, including the five whys technique, because some aspects of these tools are usually overlooked, such as when and where to stop and how to differentiate multiple causes through a weighing system that prevents loss of focus.

The Art of Root Cause Analysis [Quality Progress] A Master Back Belt discusses the process, the benefits, and the problems of using the five whys technique for root cause analysis.

Five Whys and a Why Not [Quality Progress] This article discusses adding a "why not?" question to the five whys line of questioning, arguing that the method will be significantly enhanced while still maintaining the simplicity of the original method.

Why Ask Why? [Quality Progress] Using the five whys technique is valuable to discovering latent causes because identifying them early can prevent other organizational issues.

Turning ‘Who’ Into ‘How’ [Quality Progress] When things go wrong, the goal should be to move away from trying to determine "who" was at fault and quickly transition into a problem-solving mindset of "how" to make things better.

Excerpted from The Public Health Quality Improvement Handbook, ASQ Quality Press.

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