When students graduate high school and go to college, they leave behind their social support systems and their families. This is both an exciting and anxiety producing time in life, where they are trying new things and meeting new people. I’m designing a mobile product that will support this lifestyle transition, and help college students explore who they are and who they would like to become.
The above is my thesis project in a nutshell. It has gone through an evolutionary process since last May, when it was merely a seed of my desire to explore identity and products. I chose college freshmen because they going through an intense period of identity formation, one of my advisors had been working with college freshmen and had a continued interest in the group, and they were easily accessible.
“Problem setting is a process in which, interactively, we name the things to which we will attend and frame the context in which we will attend to them.” —The Reflective Practitioner
Choosing a target group without really having an idea of a problem has been an interesting challenge. It’s a stark contrast to my work with diabetics over the summer with Adaptive Path where there were some obvious and critical problems. With college freshmen, I’ve found that while they do have some pain points, their problems, in general, aren’t that critical. They manage to make friends, discover activities, spend lots of time on Facebook, and occasionally go to class.
“We create problems and solutions at the same time and in parallel, in a process where they coevolve.”
—Thoughtful Interaction Design
So my challenge has been trying to articulate the problem I’m trying to solve, which has led me to ask “What is a problem?” Do you need a problem to start designing a yet to be realized preferred state?
Comments
3 responses to “What is a problem?”
It’s an interesting point, and I’ve got a similar issue, but with my paper instead of project. At some point I think the problem is relative and relates to the values of the designer and the perceived values of your audience/target group.
The critical problem might be the fact that there is no critical problem. Perhaps (my bias showing here) the problem is that they are disengaged and unaware of things they should be. Whose to say that the current way of living as a college freshman is healthy to themselves and others? Also, what behaviors at that stage in life lead to future problems? Eating habits? Attitudes? I dunno. It seems like the intense identity formation sets a tone for they might relate to society for a long time afterwards, and thus a critical time to instill any values you find important in the world.
What about the balancing of courses, friends, family and all that at a school like CMU? Plus, what happens when they go back home. As freshman they are changing and no longer the same person as when they left.
Then again, who knows, I’m not that familiar with data you’ve collected. (Beh, I’m finding other people’s projects so much more fascinating because they seem fresh compared to my own).
A lot of people cling to facebook and other social activities on the web to stay in touch with said friends. Its a different world out there for new college kids. While we ended up losing over 95% of our friends and peers from high school, a lot of kids these days keep up through myspace or facebook.
Imran: as I am discussing in my thesis paper on the design process, the values of the designer have a huge impact in the type of solution that comes out of the process. Good point also about the impact of the choices students make now on their future. Their focus is on the here and now, because the experience is so new it overwhelms their ability to think long term. Also, long term at this point in life for them hasn’t really had time to develop. The degree to which they can reflect on their lives is limited by the amount of time they’ve been alive.
Certainly, there are some interesting issues, which I’m glad you see. My point is that problem framing seems different when you are completely finding a problem yourself versus a known problem (eg., insulin pumps suck).
Dennis: Some of the people I’ve talked to spend several hours each day keeping in touch with high school friends, and have anywhere from 200 to 700 Facebook friends.