Have You Met TED(W)?
Master unbiased and open-ended conversations. Every time.
👋 Hey, I’m Nikki. Each week I write about UX research strategy, communicating impact, and using AI to do your best work. For more: Claude Skills Bundle | Claude Agents | AI Prompt Library | Team Training | AI Courses for UXRs
P.S. Paid subscribers get access to full archive, all content, a private Slack community, Substack lives, and a hub of templates, scripts, and mini-courses
Hi there, you amazing, curious person!
The most common answer in user research, product, tech, and what feels like the entire world is:
“It depends.”
There are very few times I will say, “Do X, and you will be better at Y.”
Meet one of those few exceptions:
Yes. Ted gets its own big image. And also two fun references:
Or:
Okay. I’m done with gifs. On to the gold.
There are very few copy-and-paste formulas that lead to better outcomes and fewer quick wins. But I’m happy to say this is a quick-win formula to help you ask better, unbiased, non-leading, open-ended questions that lead to depth, rich insights, and data gold.
Most “bad questions” aren’t evil. They’re just lazy structures that trap your participant in yes/no, opinions, and future fantasy. TEDW is the simplest fix I know that works across almost any generative session. Paid subscribers get the version you can actually use mid-interview, under pressure:
the TEDW framework (with examples for each letter)
a “horrible questions” checklist so you can spot bad prompts fast
before/after rewrites you can copy into your next guide
practice prompts to turn TEDW into muscle memory
real-life TEDW phrasing you can use in meetings, 1:1s, and stakeholder chats
Exclusively for paid subscribers
