After working on a persona, a mind map, problem statements, and coming up with main problem areas and solution goals, we feel we are one step closer to coming up with a solution to an important exercise problem for people with one arm. This exercise was valuable because it helped us better understand our target user and it allowed us to understand the root problems related to exercising with one arm. Creating a persona allowed us to be more empathetic when approaching the problem statements. The persona made our target user more real and we will continue to keep Gary in mind throughout the rest of the innovation process. The persona will also ensure that we are not designing a solution for everyone, we are designing a solution that fits users similar to our persona. Keeping our target user group narrow will ensure we create a solution that is really valuable to a more niche group of users instead of a solution that isn’t that good for a lot of people.
Creating the mind map and problem statements/areas and solutions goals was valuable because it allowed us to see the direction our project is going. We were able to narrow the project down to five different problem categories while still staying broad enough in these specific categories to ensure we have lots of possible solutions. This activity was helpful because we were able to see direction and understand what areas we should be focusing on. So far, the project is going really well. We are at a different point than we expected to be at. When we started the project, we thought we would focus on one problem and thought a little about what a solution to that problem could be but now we are focusing on five problems that we never considered at the start of the project. The direction our project is heading makes a lot of sense and we are looking forward to working on solutions soon!