Week 6: Initial ideas for solutions…

and insightful feedback from guest crits

Just wrapped up with our mid-term presentations! Tough, but was a great week in terms of further defining a few directions for my problem space and receiving feedback on solutions from industry experts.

Problem space recap: Many folks tend to pay attention to their mental-wellbeing only in times of distress — how might we help people notice, build and maintain their mental-wellbeing consistently?…just like one’s physical health!

Redefined value props (more like solution directions at this point)

Based on the feedback from our thesis faculty Krystal, I tried to redefine my value props. What emerged was something interesting: three directions in which I could think of addressing my problem space. Although I didn't end up with clear value props, I definitely think it helped me scope down ways in which I could address this huge problem space. These directions considered all the insights from the conversations I’ve had and the research I’ve done! I’ll take another stab at writing more specific value props this week. Here’s what my directions looked like:

1. Mindset shift: An easy way to become aware of the mental wellbeing spectrum outside of mental illness.
2. Reframing the problem: A relatable way to initiate & build mental wellbeing.
3. Collective experience: An inspiring way to drive mental wellbeing through community connectedness.

Brainstorming solutions

As a first step, I carried a few rounds of timed brainstorming sessions using post-its. I learned this technique a few years ago — the idea being to come up with as many ideas as possible, without judging if they were good or not.

Quantity over quality

For the midterm presentation, we were required to present three ideas to guest crits, and so I chose three at random and tried to evolve them a little. While doing so, I did foresee some potential problems with the three, but I knew this was just the beginning of the solutions process, so I decided to just push through and not think too much.

Here’s what the 3 ideas evolved as:

The first two followed the second direction of “reframing the problem”

1. A game that helps one identify and work on their inner-critic

Inspiration: An often spoken about concept in the world of psychology and therapy, the idea here was to provide a means to people to understand and bring kindness to their inner negative voice — something that many struggle with!

2. A safe space to get better at difficult conversations

Inspiration: Emotional intelligence has been valued as a key skill, whether for better personal relationships or workplace ones. The idea here was to help people identify their thoughts and feelings and then help them respond vs react better to difficult conversations.

The last idea followed the third direction of “collective experience”.

3. A inspiring experience that helps to zoom out and bring awareness to the people and space around.

Inspiration: Another aspect of good wellbeing is feeling connected to a community or something larger. It helps one zoom out and look beyond themselves. The idea here was to help people pull themselves out of their every day and help them bring attention to things they don’t usually notice or think about, with an inspiring moment.

Feedback from guest crits

Here are some main takeaways based on the feedback I received from the guest crits and my faculty:

What was well-received:

• The overall topic and problem space — seemed to resonate with everyone– could feel some good energy after my presentation! I think I could finally explain the problem space and topic better, something I was struggling with previously.
• Turns out my competitive research was on point — I was a little nervous about this since an industry expert from wellness was a guest critic — was happy she validated that!
• I did a good job of tying my value props to my audience and solution — was easy for people to understand and make sense of everything I presented before the solutions.

What could be better:

• Need to define a more specific audience for my problem space — at this point, my target groups were very broad. Also, adding personas to bring my audience to life. This was a known concern, and I hope to get into defining it this week.
• Need to think about including more statistics and scientific data to my research and pitch— seems like consumers buy/trust something in wellness when it's prescriptive — very interesting for me to learn this, I was wondering about the exact same thing a few weeks ago.
• Storytelling — could add the COVID angle to make it more relatable to people at this point.
• My value props need to be more specific and clear. This was a known concern too and will try to define them better.

That’s it for this week. More soon!