Hypothesize Pain — Maya Patel

Use abduction to move from experience map to pain hypotheses

Following the toolkit naming conventions, this file is named exp-08-hypothesize-pain-2025-03-14.qmd.

1. Clarify the Unknown

  • Most Urgent Unknown:
    What hidden pain best explains Maya’s recurring anxiety spikes during her evening commute home?

  • Supporting Evidence:

    • Clustered themes: Reassurance routines, Route choice & environment, Crowding & vigilance.
    • Persona: Maya Patel.
    • Experience Map: shows low anxiety leaving work, rising vigilance on train, and a peak when walking home at night.

2. Generate Possible Explanations

From the evidence, we brainstormed multiple plausible pain hypotheses and tagged each with pain type(s):

  1. Uncertainty pain
    • Hypothesis: Maya’s stress spikes when her environment feels unpredictable (dark streets, sudden detours).
    • Pain types: Functional (lost time from rerouting), Emotional (anxiety from unpredictability).
  2. Isolation pain
    • Hypothesis: Anxiety rises when she feels alone — being “watched” over text reduces but doesn’t erase the fear.
    • Pain types: Emotional (fear when walking alone), Social (strain on roommate as safety contact).
  3. Control pain
    • Hypothesis: Crowds, erratic strangers, or blocked routes make Maya feel she has no control over her commute safety.
    • Pain types: Emotional (stress from powerlessness), Physical (fatigue from constant vigilance).
  4. Social burden pain
    • Hypothesis: Her check-in system creates secondary stress — she feels guilty for making her roommate worry.
    • Pain types: Social (guilt, burden on others), Emotional (worry about straining relationships).

3. Check Alignment

  • Uncertainty pain: Supported by route-avoidance behaviors (longer lit path) and her quotes about disruption.
  • Isolation pain: Strongly matches reassurance routines; her texting is evidence.
  • Control pain: Supported by crowded train behaviors (bag-holding, scanning, “keys in hand”).
  • Social burden pain: Present, but less urgent; seems secondary compared to her direct anxieties.

4. Refine the List

We trimmed to three stronger candidates:

  1. Uncertainty pain (functional + emotional).
  2. Isolation pain (emotional + social).
  3. Control pain (emotional + physical).

Social burden pain is retained in the “refrigerator” but deprioritized for now.

5. Select the Most Plausible

  • Chosen hypothesis:
    Maya experiences significant anxiety when commuting at night because she feels unsafe walking alone, especially in unpredictable or poorly lit environments.

  • Pain types:
    Emotional + Functional, with social overtones.

  • Reason:
    This explanation best integrates the emotional spike in her experience map, the route-choice cluster, and her reliance on reassurance routines.

  • Refrigerated hypotheses:

    • Control pain: revisit if subway crowding proves stronger in tests.
    • Social burden pain: may resurface if reassurance routines become problematic.


6. Next Steps

  • Convert the chosen pain into a testable hypothesis (Diamond 2 → Test stage).
  • Design pain validation experiments to measure frequency, urgency, and willingness to solve.
  • Keep refrigerated hypotheses visible — surprises often point back to them.

Traceability