Elicit
Supply only the shape of the prompt, never the content; everything that appears must come from them.
Gaver's probes: odd tasks instead of interview questions.
Seen in Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne and Elena Pacenti, Cultural Probes, 1999
Try it on your work
Hand someone materials and a situation, not instructions, and let them make what the situation suggests, uninterrupted. What they made is what the situation actually says; your brief was an override.
Ask one open question and then stay silent, fully, uncomfortably, until the other person fills it. Their second answer is usually the real one; write both down.
Present your unfinished system to someone and let them use it wrongly without correction for ten minutes. Their misuse is a specification of the system they needed.
How it has been used
Surface what people already know but haven't said: the well-placed question, the blank map handed over, the "draw your commute". The move forbids supplying the content: everything that appears must come from them, and your only material is the prompt's shape.
Where it leads
Grouped under Show me what I’m missing