The five whys is a pretty common concept in design for drilling down to the root cause of a problem. Simply, it's just asking why fives times, using the answer of the last as the question to the next.

Yet despite being a common concept, asking why a thing is the way it is, is often anything but a common action.

In fact, it seems like even asking why once is more than many people can manage. I say this because more often than not, if people stopped to ask why even once, they might not like answer and then maybe do something about it. Instead of carrying on in ignorance.

Companies thrive on ignorance. It allows them to make little changes to their offerings that make things better for them and worse for us. Profit, in exchange for a worse experience, worse taste, or worse service life. They get away with it too, knowing we're too busy, too overwhelmed, too distracted to stop and ask why.

Why, does Mainland butter have 20% canola oil in it?

Why, after almost three years, is AI still only sorta useful for summarising Zoom calls?

Why, is Apple's biggest iOS 26 announcement a Windows Vista/Aero reskin?

If the majority stopped for a moment and asked; "Hang on, why does my meat pie have so much gravy in it?", and then changed their behaviour based on the answer, companies might realise they've been caught and return their offerings back to something meatier. Instead, we largely carry on in ignorance to the point that most of what we spend our time and money on is now so bad we have a name for it.

Assumption-based In/action

One of the big reasons we don't ask why is because we've already made an assumption that then forms the basis of our action or inaction.

We've assumed that meat pie companies want to make the best damn meat pies they can.

We've assumed a new glassy iOS, despite being harder to read and use, is somehow better than last year's iOS.

We've assumed people promising us AI aren't simply lying to us.

We've assumed butter is butter.

Maybe once this was true. And it's possible that our assumptions is a learned behaviour because of it (though, humans have been exploiting human behaviour for profit for millennia, so I wouldn't want to put money on it). Certainly, companies try and build trust with us. Often using oblique language that on one hand makes us feel pacified, while using the other hand to extract our money (or privacy, or quality) from us with the other.

When we take action based on assumptions, we're ripe for exploitation. At worst we're robbed of our time, money or identity. At best, we make a choice that leaves us with a sub-optimal experience. Rarely, our assumptions are accurate.

Get Out the Razors

Back in the dark ages I used to employ a few philosohphical razors to help make sense of the behaviours that I would see go on around me. My favourite, as it is with many designers, was Occam's Razor:

Explanations that require fewer unjustified assumptions are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.

But the most useful for me was actually Hanlon's Razor:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

When we make assumptions about why things are the way they are, we tend to doom-spiral into thinking that the world has it in for us. Specifically. As an individual. The application of Hanlon's Razor is often a useful sanity check that can bring us out of such a spiral. Rather than believing your boss despises you and wants you back in the office full time to make your life miserable, it's more likely they simply feel deeply insecure and need to surround themselves with subordinates so they can feel like a boss.

By applying Hanlon's Razor, we're required to investigae why the thing that looks like malice may just be simple stupidity.

Even the enshittification of everything we consume isn't usually out of malice. It's just a turning of the screws to make line go up. If companies, and the humans that run them, could give you the same product for less cost to them, they would and at one point they probably did. But Moloch dictates that there is a limit to this, and once reached, something else must be sacrificed to the god of profit. It's nothing personal.

Thankfully we have regulations that dictate how much meat must be in our meat pie.

*Side note: on the topic of useful philosophical razors, Hitchen's Razor is also handy. That is:

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

This is a simple and effective way of unburdening yourself of bullshit. It becomes much simpler to sort information into evidence-backed and no-evidence, and then process accordingly.

Critical Thinking; The Life Skill

It's an unfortunate fact of modern life that we can't trust that companies have our interests in mind (this is also true if you work in one). As fatiguing as it is, the onus is on us to ask why things are the way they are if we're to make informed decisions, and take actions that are in our own interests. Put simply; if you don't do it, no one will.

Of course, this can have an unintended side-effect of turning you into a cynic and a curmudgeon. There's certainly such a thing as the pendulum swinging too far the other way, and I would caution against turning into an old man yelling at clouds (like me).

What I propose is not to have a default state of doubt and distrust, but rather a default state of curiosity. That is, withholding any judgement until you've looked more closely at the cause, and the cause of that cause. Importantly, asking why, being genuinely open to discovering the answer rather than being combative or hostile. An important strategy if you want genuine, rather than defensive, answers.

Like Hanlon's Razor, by asking why we might discover that things aren't as bad as they seem. Even if they are objectively worse. There's often simple explanations (a la Occam's Razor) as to why things are the way they are, and it's almost certainly not to spite you, specifically. Instead, you'll become better informed, will make better decisions, and take more effective action.

Critical Thinking; The Design Skill

This is a design blog, so of course I'm going to bring it back to design.

On a recent project I was worked on, we discussed adding an accessory to a device for a trial. The proposition was to develop this accessory as we intended it be in production. The problem with this was that to prototype this component had already proven expensive and was very much overkill for the purpose of this trial. Before even asking why, my suggestion was to design and build a much simpler and cheaper version of that accessory that would be sufficient for our needs.

However when I actually started asking why, it came to light that this accessory was intended to serve in more of a marketing exercise, rather than for any real purpose of the trial. Digging into it, it then started to make sense why building such expensive and non-essential components would be considered. Going on to ask a few more whys, specifically around if this accessory, in any way/shape/form, was truly needed at all. The answer ultimately was 'yes', but by being curious about why we were planning to do this accessory, we became clear about the purpose and how best to execute it. And if, such as in this case, we have two conflicting requirements, we can fork the development to better meet each need separately.

As designers, if we develop our designs based on assumptions we're setting ourselves up for failure, or at the very least leaving our users worse off than if we'd only stop to ask; why?.