Understand
Students conduct background research, talk to users and experts, and develop a problem statement. They aim to learn everything they can from others and the existing body of knowledge about their area of interest. They should be asking themselves and others questions about the field. *These activities are highly recommended.
Potential Activities:
*Question Generation
Guide your learning; think about what you know and don’t know and generate questions to build awareness.
Expert Interviews
Go out and learn from experts in your field. Talk with 1 to 2 experts and learn what they care about.
User Interviews
Find future users of your idea. What do they want? Do they understand the problem you’re trying to solve?
Visit Users in the field
While interviewing, you can also observe your users in action. What do they do currently?
Digest similar projects
Look for other projects around your interest. How can you improve upon what they already offer?
Read journal articles
Have every member of the team search for 3 or more journal articles and summarize them.
Stakeholder map
Diagram the interactions between your users and your idea. Who cares about what and why do they care?
360 Degree lightning talks
Prepare a short pitch for your teammates on what the most important areas of this field are.
condensation
Once you have learned about your field of interest, start distilling that knowledge into action.
how might we question storm
Develop ideas by asking them as questions. Complete the sentence “How might we . . . ?”
*Problem Statement
Take all of your collected work thus far and write a problem statement.