Hopes & Fears Exercise 😨 Prompts

SUMMARY

Purpose: The Hopes & Fears exercise helps teams surface user expectations and anxieties during ideation, grounding design direction in authentic emotional context.

Design Thinking Phase: Ideate

Time: 45–60 min session + 1–2 hours analysis

Difficulty: ⭐⭐

When to use:When kicking off a feature concept or redesignTo bridge stakeholder assumptions and user realitiesDuring early ideation sprints to frame problem spaces emotionally

What it is

The Hopes & Fears exercise is a collaborative ideation method used in early design thinking work. It invites participants—users, team members, or stakeholders—to articulate what they hope to gain and what they worry might go wrong in a given experience, product, or initiative. The goal is to map emotional drivers that inform design priorities.

📺 Video by FreshTilledSoil. Embedded for educational reference.

Why it matters

Unlike standard ideation tools, the Hopes & Fears method makes space for vulnerability and aspiration. It captures not just feedback, but emotional intent. By designing with hopes and fears pinned to the wall, teams stay closely aligned with the underlying values users bring into an experience. It also aligns internal stakeholders by exposing shared concerns early—often defusing later conflict.

When to use

• At the beginning of a new experience design project
• When exploring high-risk features or sensitive domains (e.g., health, finance, data transparency)
• To complement personas or journey mapping with emotional depth

Benefits

• Rich Insights: Helps uncover user needs that aren’t visible in metrics.
• Flexibility: Works across various project types and timelines.
• User Empathy: Deepens understanding of behaviours and motivations.

How to use it

Set up a workshop with relevant participants—this may include product team members, mixed-level stakeholders, real users (if moderated), or a cross-functional design group. Use a visual space (e.g. Miro, FigJam, or physical wall).

1. Introduce the concept: Ask participants to imagine the ideal outcomes (hopes) and potential worst-case outcomes (fears) of the product or feature under discussion.
2. Individually or in small groups, participants brainstorm 2–3 hopes and 2–3 fears. Encourage emotional honesty. Stickies or virtual cards work well.
3. Group and label similar hopes and fears using affinity clustering. Observe emerging patterns—such as unmet expectations or repeated anxieties.
4. Facilitate a discussion to unpack what each item tells you about desired experiences, broken trust, or unresolved tension.
5. Use these themes later in ideation, prioritisation, or experience mapping. Hopes often hint at success criteria; fears can inform edge cases and error-proofing.

Example Output

Fictional example from a fintech app redesign:

• Hopes:
  • “I’ll finally feel on top of my budget”
  • “This app could help me start saving consistently”
  • “It’ll be easier to understand my recurring payments”
• Fears:
  • “This will expose just how bad my spending habits are”
  • “They’ll sell my data to insurers or banks”
  • “I’ll feel ashamed each time I open the app”

Common Pitfalls

• Skipping analysis: The activity output is only as useful as the insights derived from clustering and reflection. Take time to unpack patterns.
• Biasing responses: Participants may self-censor based on the presence of leadership or ambiguity in the brief. Create psychological safety with neutrality and invitations to speculate.
• Jumping to solutions early: It’s tempting to ideate fixes prematurely. Let hopes and fears linger before mapping to features—this ensures better emotional alignment later in the process.

10 Design-Ready AI Prompts for Hopes & Fears Exercise – UX/UI Edition

How These Prompts Work (C.S.I.R. Framework)

Each of the templates below follows the C.S.I.R. method — a proven structure for writing clear, effective prompts that get better results from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or any other LLM.

C.S.I.R. stands for:

• Context: Who you are and the UX situation you're working in
• Specific Info: Key design inputs, tasks, or constraints the AI should consider
• Intent: What you want the AI to help you achieve
• Response Format: The structure or format you want the AI to return (e.g. checklist, table, journey map)

Level up your career with smarter AI prompts.Get templates used by UX leaders — no guesswork, just results.Design faster, research smarter, and ship with confidence.First one’s free. Unlock all 10 by becoming a member.

Prompt Template 1: “Generate Hopes & Fears Based on User Personas”

Generate Hopes & Fears Based on User Personas

Context: You are a UX designer preparing for an ideation workshop related to a [new mobile product].
Specific Info: You have access to [3 detailed personas] that represent different [financial literacy levels and digital behaviours].
Intent: Identify key emotional hopes and fears each persona might bring into the product experience.
Response Format: List 3 hope statements and 3 fear statements per persona, expressed in first-person voice. Include one sentence explaining the emotional driver behind each.

If any persona info is vague, prompt me for clarification.
Then, suggest a use case or feature exploration driven by a common fear across personas.