After getting frustrated with the empathy map process, I was excited to move to a different step and try to dig a little bit deeper into our insights. Overall, I thought the process of creating the problem statements was incredibly useful and there are a few lessons I learned along the way:
Trust your instincts. When my team reconvened after the partner exercise, I got a little nervous because our problem statements all seemed to be very similar on the surface. After analyzing them a little more and hearing from my teammates, however, I realized that they each had their own flare. For example, two that seemed almost identical at first actually aimed to solve the problem of heightened stress in two different ways – one focused on relaxation within graduate students’ personal space, while the other focused on that same relaxation, but between roommates within shared living spaces. At the end of class, I actually felt more reassured because of the similarities between the four statements, because it showed that we all picked up on the same key data and wanted to move down related paths.
Be clear and descriptive. Getting feedback from a partner outside of my group was probably the best part of the problem statement process. After two months of working in the same team, you can definitely get stuck in your own little world. Parts of my problem statement that made perfect sense to me confused my partner a little bit, because she didn’t know the background of our specific topic. By talking it through with my partner and revamping the vague parts, I was able to come out on the other side with a clear and descriptive problem statement.
Don’t inject your own opinions into the problem statement. When I first made my problem statement, I had something at the end about graduate students wanting to be “free of guilt”. One of my teammates brought up the fact that none of our data supported that part of the statement. I had subconsciously added on my own idea of what someone would want out of social time based off my own experiences – i.e. I enjoy socialization more when I don’t have to worry about feeling guilty about not doing work. In my head, that seemed like the logical add-on, but in actuality, it was biased. At the end of the day, I think it’s important to remember to go off of the data we have and the insights we’ve collected, even if I think my own experiences make sense.
I’m excited to ideate another problem statement in class on Thursday and see where we go next!