Identifying the Challenge/Problem

Discover a challenge or pain point that needs to be improved or invented completely.
A design challenge articulates the problem you are trying to solve, and helps you define a scope that is neither too narrow nor too broad. The Frame Your Design Challenge worksheet will guide you through a series of steps to get the right frame on your challenge and get started on the right foot. As you do this you’ll ask yourself: Does my challenge drive toward ultimate impact, take into account context and constraints, and allow for a variety of potential solutions? You’ll dial those in, and then refine your challenge until it’s one you’re excited to tackle.

INSTRUCTIONS
Start by taking a first stab at writing your design challenge down. It should be short and easy to remember. Try composing a single sentence that conveys the problem you want to solve. We often phrase these as How Might We questions to set our teams up to be solution-oriented and to generate a lot of ideas along the way.

Remember each design challenge should meet these three requirements; is it feasible, viable, and desirable.
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Next you’ll want to think about the audience you’re aiming to serve and the context, constraints, and influences in their lives. We call this ECOSYSTEM MAPPING.pdf. Download this worksheet. This step will help you see how broad or narrow your challenge scope needs to be.
Now that you’ve gathered and organized more information, review your design question and see if it still feels right. Refine your question and capture this, and the information you used to get there, in your Frame Your Design Challenge worksheet.
Framing the right design challenge is key to arriving at a good solution. A quick test we often run on a design challenge is to see if we can come up with five possible solutions in just a few minutes. If so, you’re likely on the right track. Try this, and make tweaks as needed to get to the right framing and scope.
Once you have refined your scope using the EcoSystem mapping and have your challenge framed exactly how you want to go forward, please submit all pictures, documents, and worksheets in a press quality PDF with a list of 5 HOW MIGHT WE questions related to your problem/challenge.

Below are all the links to the resources as well as actual websites that will help you further understand HOW MIGHT WE questions. Please check them out. I will be grading this on quality of information. If the interviewee stopped and had to leave, did you find someone else or did you just finish filling it out to “complete the assignment” How did it go overall? What surprises did you have? How did they help or hinder you that you had to pivot and change your questions? etc. If you have questions on your grade, please see the comments I will leave if you get docked more than 5 points.

Resources

https://vimeo.com/191566926v

Last Completed Projects