What I learned from AMA with Chris Do

Thrilled to have attended a local Chris Do event last Thursday right here in Canada! No need to fly from Thailand anymore—I'm now in a place bustling with opportunities.

The AMA format of the event was incredibly engaging, allowing a warm and casual interaction with Chris Do and fellow designers from Seattle, Vancouver, and San Francisco. I felt connected to a community that shares my passion.

One of the many insights Chris shared that resonated with me was the art of asking questions. A well-crafted question can be clear, simple, provocative, open-ended, focused, and relevant. It's not just about getting the right answer but adding value to your work, whether in job applications, team collaborations, client communication, and beyond.

Good questions framework
❌ Bad questions are confusing and complex — By fitting too many ideas together, the question became disorientated, loses focus, and makes it hard for the person on the other side to give you a crisp response.
✅ Good questions are clear, focused, and simple — There is only one way to interpret it, and you only ask one thing at a time.

❌ Bad questions are biased and leading — These are not real questions, they are leading someone to say something the questioner wants. You get answers you want instead of answers you need.
✅ Good questions are open and curious — They are generously looking for a solution, they don’t have an agenda, and they are ready to unlearn and learn.

❌ Bad questions are irrelevant and offtopic — They don’t consider the expertise and the context the receiver is in, and thus do not help the questioner learn anything meaningful.
✅ Good questions are relevant — They consider deeply what the receiver’s expertise is and focused only on that topic. Thus maximizing the opportunity to learn a deep subject from the expert’s wisdom.

❌ Bad questions are lame and predictable — These are things that you can figure out on your own, they are repetitive, and they won’t extract any new insights from the receiver.
✅ Good questions are provocative — They make the receiver pause and think because it requires wisdom and depth from the receiver as they might not have thought of that question before.

❌ Bad questions are binary — These are the Yes/No questions. “Should I do x or not?” You won’t understand the rationale behind the answer because the question limits how the receiver can respond.
✅ Good questions are open-ended. They don’t just want a quick answer, they want to have a conversation. They want to learn the rationale behind a decision.

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