xy-problem

The XY problem describes a scenario where individuals ask about their attempted solution rather than the underlying problem, leading to inefficiency in tech help-seeking. It provides guidelines to improve communication by sharing broader context and details.

The article argues that engineers should resist immediately answering users' first questions, instead using follow-up questions to uncover the deeper problem, which improves both the user's mental model and the product itself, using examples from the Perfetto performance debugging tool.