Defining the problem

Define is a word that a lot of people can take the association to and use it as a basis for what they do in everyday life. More times than not, we usually use Define as finding what a word means on a broader scale and use that to dictate how we even use the word we’re finding. However, when it comes to the work space, we’re actually using the word a bit differently than how we’re used to. At first, it may sound very complicated but the more we figure out how the word is used in Design Thinking the more often we’ll be able to use the actual word to our advantage.

In the world of Design Thinking, we use the word Define as a way of breaking down a problem from the inside out and then seeing asking ourselves if there are any individual issues within the big picture that is directly impacting the people around us. We then think of how the people are feeling towards the problem at hand while also coming up with solutions in order to combat it. This all sounds like it’s a difficult task and that may be true for those who don’t have a very active imagination or those who are not prevalent at coming up with solutions. However, even with those weaknesses that some people have, it’s still not even that hard to at least think of something that works for everyone. Really, it all boils down to working with others and as a team to do these things since it’s normally harder but possible to do it alone.

Thanks to the article on Writing Effective Problem Statements by Christian Reuter, there is a good idea of how to do this step in Design Thinking very effectively, as in the title. First, what you need to do is work with your team collaboratively to discuss the material you’re working with and how you could review it on a broader scale. After that is when you write the statement you want to solve in a way that sounds convincing, the statement of which should be worded as a question in order to get our creative juices flowing. An example of a statement would be “How can we provide aspiring developers with the resources they need to grow and learn?” A way of making the statement not limit us in terms of our creativity and encourage us to think outside the box. The only other thing to do with the problem statement is to visualize it, whether it’s drawing it on a sheet of paper, writing the integrating problems on sticky notes, or doing anything you can to show it off to the group in any way shape or form.

In our class, our professor had us do everything that is said in this article but with two extra thinking motives to do in it. We were looking into our campus to see which of the problems we had were affecting the students as a whole. For my group, we decided that the biggest problem is the shuttle system and parking. The shuttle system because some shuttles take you to certain places and take a long time to even get to those places, not only that but the number of shuttles is very limiting, especially given the number of students here. And parking because on campus there is very limited parking for students and even when there is parking, they are mostly reserved for a certain amount of people or they can’t park there at all. So after taking notes on the overarching problem and how it’s affecting the students, we then have to come up with solutions on how to we could fix the problem. Some of the solutions we came up with include increasing the number of shuttles going to and from the campus and increasing the number of parking spaces for students to park in. And then we all put them on sticky notes and stick them to the table for better visualization.

Overall, the “define” step in design thinking is probably more intimidating to others since it requires you and your group to think creatively on the problem you each decided to tackle. However, with the right cooperation and a good thinking environment, it’s not that bad once you get used to it and you get into it better.