The Problem Statement (PS) project results in a clear, coherent statement of the defining elements of the design problem your team opts to engage with. The PS is challenging because it requires you to distill complex ideas and details into a brief, concrete description of a problem.
The PS is the 2nd assignment in the project set that includes the Team Statement, Problem Statement, Solution Prototype, & Solution Proposal. These projects are linked by team & topic. Once your design team chooses a focus for the Proposal project, that problem becomes the common ground for all 4 projects for your team. If your team has not yet selected a focus, review the Project Pathways & Knowledge Building section of this description as a team, & choose the problem that best fits your team's collective abilities & interests.
This project requires one submission. That submission includes the following documents:
For the full list of core and supporting documents/files, & specifications, refer to Submission Requirements.
The Problem Statement (PS) project is a simple document that nonetheless represents a complex array of problem-solving strategies & design actions. To complete this assignment, you'll need to return to the concepts & strategies from the workshop Identifying Information Design Problems. Before you can proceed, your team must also decide which of the two challenge scenarios is it will address during the project series for which this assignment is the second part.
Problem solving is the core activity of information design. We do not create information products without purpose. Rather, we construct information products that contribute solutions to meaningful design problems. However, as Norman suggests in The Design of Everyday Things, designers often launch into projects before they have developed a complete understanding of the situation, the needs & expectations of project stakeholders, or of the constraints and opportunities that frame their approach to addressing the problem before them: "Good designers never start by trying to solve the problem given to them: they start by trying to understand what the real issues are" (p. 278).
Remember that in that workshop, you used a modified version of the UX/DT method Ask 5X Why to explore issues connected to General Education enrollments. For this project, you'll apply that same method to exploring the challenge scenario that your group selected for this project series. In preparation for that workshop, you accessed a Google doc that I set up to guide your investigation.
The other essential resource from that workshop was Maria Rosala's article "Problem Statements in UX Discovery." I encourage you to revisit that material as you prepare to engage with this project.
Every assignment in this project series links to the whole design endeavor that confronts you. With that in mind, it is timely to discuss the notion of design bricolage in the context of content strategy & creation.
The terms bricolage & bricoleur emerged from architecture connected with the practice of harnessing the knowledge & abilities of available personnel to design architectural solutions for problems using the materials & equipment on hand. In other words, bricolage is about design enacted only with the tools, resources, & expertise to which you already have access. A bricoleur is a designer capable of such adaptation. Bricolage is a particularly appropriate design mindset for technical communication & information design, given the impact that immediate context has on the design decisions that lead to effective solutions.
For our purposes in this course, bricolage is your perpetual state of design. That is, you only know what you have learned so far during your studies & experiences, & the palette of tools you have available at any given moment is often limited either by their availability or by your level of ability to produce a professional solution with the available tools. The one element of the project you can control is your own level of investment & dedication to the tasks ahead of you. Thus, you are limited in this project series mainly by your current level of professional development & your degree of willingness to invest in learning what you need to learn on the fly to proceed with a professional information design solution for the problem you choose to engage.
Your team must choose one of the scenarios described below as a focus for its work throughout this project series. The scenarios provide framing & context, but your team determines what it judges to be an appropriate strategy for addressing the problem. Neither of the scenarios or organizations in them are real, although all elements of these scenarios are plausible & realistic.
The Community Farm. Food Is Life, a local nonprofit organization with a history of working to counter the City of Saginaw's federal designation as a food desert, has been gifted with a warehouse on a plot of land.
After much debate, Food Is Life decided to transform the site into a community farm. They envision using 3 of the 4 inner floors as a year-round hydroponic farm that grows vegetables & raises sustainable livestock (e.g., chickens), with the last floor serving several connected purposes: storing & managing produce; housing a kitchen classroom that serves meals to needy citizens & provides a space for teaching nutrition, food preparation, and so on. Food Is Life will establish a rooftop garden for crops that are difficult to grow indoors, & reclaim half of the site's green & brown spaces as community gardens that can be rented to individual citizens as family garden plots.
Food Is Life reached out to your design team to seek assistance in developing appropriate information solutions to support this project.
The SVSU Office for Community Connection (OCC). SVSU prides itself on community connection, work that resulted in the university earning the Carnegie Foundation's Community Engagement classification in 2015. The SVSU OCC serves the university by working to maintain the level of service activity necessary to maintain that designation.
One of the biggest challenges for the SVSU OCC is managing communication. Community organizations who are interested in seeking assistance are not always certain who to contact or what kind of activities are appropriate for SVSU participation. Students, faculty, & staff are not always made aware in a timely manner of the organizations seeking assistance or of the kinds of opportunities for service learning & public intellectualism that are available to them. SVSU also struggles to develop appropriate mechanisms for celebrating individual contributions & achievements of people who participate & who want a way of sharing such work with prospective employers or other interested audiences. The university has considered a special designation for diplomas, a badging, system, and more, but remains uncertain about how to proceed.
The SVSU OCC reached out to your design team to seek assistance in developing appropriate information solutions to support the OCC's work.
Deliverables: memo, problem statement
Document scope: 150 words (memo), 350 to 500 words (problem statement)
Project value: 100 points
Evaluation rubric: _Eval_ProblemStatement.pdf
Recommended tool(s): Microsoft Teams (collaboration); Microsoft Word (design work)
The PS project requires you to construct a document that presents a brief examination of the problem at the heart of your chosen challenge scenario followed by a clear, concise problem statement. To do that, your design team must investigate the scenario to identify a core problem or problem set.
As a team, use the modified version of Ask 5X Why to conduct a deep-dive examination of the challenge scenario. Set up & share among your team a Google doc where you can gather your thoughts. Begin with your own discussion of the scenario to see what you do and do not comprehend about the specifics. Discuss any terminology you are not all fully confident that you understand.
For example. Does everyone have a complete understanding of the food desert concept (from the Community Farm scenario) or service learning & public intellectualism (concepts tied to the Office for Community Connection scenario)? If not, use the tools to learn about them.
When you have noted in your research doc everything your team knows (or thinks it knows), turn to Open AI ChatGPT (or a similar tool that you are all familiar with) to expand your knowledge. Remember the strategies for writing queries for such tools, & use them to gather as much additional information as you can about your problem scenario.
The problem statement document is neither long nor complex. Review the demonstration doc available to you through Canvas Files. Your primary purpose here is to demonstrate your early-project-cycle knowledge of the challenge scenario & of the core problem/problem set.
With that in mind, your problem statement doc must include the following content elements.
In your own words, explain the challenge scenario. Draw on your expanded knowledge of the core concepts relevant to it that you developed during your preliminary exploration. Your explanation should be complete, thorough, & concretely detailed, but need not exceed 350 words.
Craft a concise, direct statement of the problem. The problem statement should not exceed 150 words, & should include the following elements.
Your project will be accompanied by a memo of transmittal. That category of memo introduces the document it accompanies, providing context for its audience(s). Your memo should be addressed from you to me.
Your memo should incorporate the following content and design elements.
Consult the sample documents (refer to SVSU Canvas Files: Project Support) for additional guidance.
This section is designed to help you anticipate and avoid problems as you work on this project. Therefore, as you work, consider the following hints and tips.
Approach this assignment & the whole project series like a design bricoleur. Harness your collective energy, creativity, & knowledge. If you encounter a word, concept, tool, or anything else that you cannot confidently & accurately understand, seek knowledge. You have an incredible array of tools & services available to you for gathering new knowledge: the SVSU library; professional social media platforms; peers & colleagues; internet-based research tools. Adapt & overcome. Become a resilient, self-reliant, strategic information designer.
Remember that writing in professional & technical contexts values highly the ability to write and speak with economy, directness, and professionalism. Another way of saying this is to make every word count. Stay focused on the details necessary to communicate effectively with your audience(s). Write and rewrite until your textual content makes sense and represents careful, concise, professional communication.
Consider what it means to establish a strong, consistent sense of professionalism & attention to detail visually and structurally (organizationally) with your design choices. Professional designers use words such as clean, logical, and orderly to describe document designs they appreciate & respect.
Edit carefully, seeking to express your ideas clearly and concisely. Edit out loud with the intent of writing in such a manner that your written content sounds professional and focused. Work to meet the design specs. Scrutinize your work so it is consistent, professional, and of good quality. Refine your document continuously as you work.
Read and attend carefully to these submission guidelines. Failure to do so may result in points lost on the final evaluation of your project.
Create a folder for this project inside your shared class folder on Dropbox.com. Remember, I can only view files that you place inside that folder. Until you place files in that space, you have not in practice submitted them.
Name the folder Problem Statement.
Make sure the files listed below are available to me in the project folder by the submission deadline. Model your filenames on the listed examples:
Note. Do not share the individual files or project folder with me. By placing the project files in the project folder, and by placing the project folder inside your class folder, you have already shared them by default.
This section describes the standards by which your final submission will be evaluated.
The final project submission is worth 100 possible points. You will earn points according to the standard described on the policies page (see Policies for a description of these categories).
The specific areas of emphasis for the PT project are drawn from this description and our discussions of the project (including the supporting teaching materials that I provide to you along the way). Review the project rubric (_Eval_ProblemStatement.pdf) for the specific qualities and characteristics emphasized in each evaluation category.
Remember that I will only post the point values for projects on the Grades page in SVSU Canvas. I will provide the supporting details relevant to that evaluation in your class folder in a project-specific file. Look for a Microsoft Word file in your shared class space on Dropbox with a filename that that follows this pattern:
TeamName_Eval_ProblemStatement.docx.
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