Not for everyone but it helps me:

"Could you tell me what you are trying to achieve?"

"How do you normally go about achieving this goal?" (I'm thinking like a standard procedure here)

I watch them go about how they normally handle it and look for any problems they might have!

— h*ck the system (@SkyraAngelWolf) December 11, 2018

Good advice. I was forced to do this after I realized that about 60% of users couldn’t even tell you the name of the application they most commonly use. How this is possible I don’t know and it still boggles my mind. However, if you ask a user what they were using when a problem occurred, most of them will say something like “Microsoft.” Yes, just Microsoft. Or “Adobe Windows” when they are actually using Microsoft Excel.

So when I did a whole lot of support I just asked the user to show me what they are attempting to do as they have almost no information about any of it other than rote procedure.

Doing this type of support reinforced that most people just don’t think very much about anything. Again, that assumption of similarity bias. I tend to think about tons of things all the time and I like to know details. Most people just don’t, it turns out. And these are the people who vote.