Guideline for assignment 1

1. Introduction

– Social Problems and Design Thinking (400)
- What is ‘Design Thinking’
(Definition, Benefits, and Process)
- Why is it (design thinking) a good approach to social problems?
Hints: Matching the characteristics of design thinking and that of social
problems and show how they are a good match.
Characteristics of design thinking
Characteristics of social problems
Human-centered approach & focus Related to people’s lives
on the needs of people
Innovation approach (make use of Wicked problems due to social
available technologies, find new market
failure
(business
ways..)
organizations find it costly to satisfy
those social needs) --> Innovation
helps reduce costs --> make it more
feasible
Enable
collaboration
and Involve a variety of stakeholders,
brainstorming to empathize those each of them may have different
who are affected by the problem
problems in different extents
--> Help define the problem more
accurately
Enable
collaboration

and Social problems are also multibrainstorming to generate various answer
problems
ideas before testing them with
different users
Ideate.
--> Help find the best and most
comprehensive answer
Materials: 2 reading materials of week 1
2. Personal Empathy and connection with the Social Problem (400)
- What is the particular issue you have chosen? (Theme: Employment)
- Describe the particular issue you have chosen. Explain your personal
connection to it. For example, how have you seen this issue impact your
friends, family, community or social group? Which of the UN sustainable
development goals does this issue connect to?
- What personal strengths, advantages, networks or skills do you have
which you can use to help address this problem?
3. Exploring Empathy and creation of insight into Point of View (PoV)
(800)
- Who are the people affected and impacted by this issue? Who would
value a solution to this issue?


- Create a ‘Journey map’ for one user who is impacted by this particular
issue, use ‘secondary data’ (information from your reading and research)
to develop insight into a ‘day in the life’ for this person
- Complete the “Customer Profile Map” from the Value Proposition
Canvas
- Now create 3 Empathy Maps and 3 Personas for people impacted by
the issue
NOTES:

- You should have 3 personas but only SELECT 1 persona to present
his/her journey map (with emotion map); 3 empathy maps (hearing,
saying, thinking & feeling..) & 1 Customer profile map from the Value
proposition Canvas (Job, Gain, Pain)
- Using Harvard citations, use websites, LinkedIn, Blogs, journal articles
(secondary data) but you can implement an additional qualitative
research (observation, interview) if you can to enrich the materials.
4. Problem Statement Based on all your research and reflection,
write a ‘Problem statement’ that can be used as a basis for
brainstorming and developing solutions? (400) no refernence
- Reflecion about how you understand the problems and the underlying
reasons after the first phases of the Design Thing process (EMPATHIZE)
- Now write your “How might we…” question. -->where you define the
exact problem in details.
- Give more clarification of the problem statement: what kinds of
solutions should be made, how this problem statement could guide the
next steps of the design thinking process
- As a social entrepreneur, you should define your mission relating to this
problem statement
Appendices:
- Journey map
- “Customer Profile Map” from the Value Proposition Canvas
- Personas charateristics
- Empathy maps