A 7 year old’s journey to build grit through lessons in design thinking and entrepreneurship…with some help from her mom. Think of it like Product Management 101, but with a 1st grader.
(FYI- Elena is wearing the same shirt in this post as in the last post. I want to clarify that we didn’t do all these activities in one day. She just really likes this shirt and wears it at least once a week.)
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A recap.
If you are just joining Elena’s story, I recommend reading Part 1 and Part 2 to catch up on all the details.
In Part 2, Elena hit the pavement and went to the park to validate or invalidate her customer problem statement.
Through the process, she learned:
- Be wrong early so you can be right sooner. Always test your assumptions with your target market with a willingness to be proven wrong.
- It’s not failure if you learn from it. Think of your actions as hypotheses. You test, learn, and retest. The concept of failure isn’t even part of the equation.
Reaching saturation.
A few days after her trip to the park, Elena squeezes in one more interview with a friend, and his responses are similar to those she already heard.
“How exciting! Didn’t his dreams sound similar to some of the other boys at the park,” I point out.
“Why are you so happy,” Elena asks.
I’m excited because this means Elena has talked to enough kids about the problem. She has reached the magic moment of diminishing returns in user interviews. If she does more interviews, she may learn a thing or two, but it is likely not an efficient use of her time.
And Elena needs to use her time efficiently. She has a full-time job as a first grader, after all. Her free time to work on this project is limited.
Digging for nuggets.
Elena worked hard to gather her data and she recognizes it as a valuable asset.
But the data is only valuable if she takes the time to learn from it. It doesn’t do her any good just sitting there in her “database.”
It’s time to sift through the data and find the nuggets (these are also called “insights,” but that word isn’t as fun to a seven year old).
We go into my office and sit at my desk. “I know how to type the whole alphabet with my eyes closed,” Elena tells me. And she really does. They learn to do that in Kindergarten nowadays.
Good thing too because she is about to do a lot of typing to consolidate all her learnings in one place.
For this exercise, Elena uses Mural, a canvas tool for visual and collaborative brainstorming. We especially like Mural because it is where Uncle Nick works. (Hi, Uncle Nick!)
First, Elena types in all the learnings from her interview notes and organizes them by the questions she asked.
“This is taking forever,” Elena says. Yes, it takes a lot of time. But it is worth the investment. Consolidating the research is the first step to understanding it.
Now that all the research is on the board, what can she learn?
“Kids have scary dreams. Way scarier than mine,” Elena says. Vampires, bears, burglars that hurt parents, bears that eat parents. (What’s up with the parents theme?) No wonder kids don’t want to go to sleep.
Elena can learn even more by moving the squares around. Arranging them in multiple ways allows her to think about the content differently.
We find things that seem similar and group them together. Then, she gives each group a title.
“A lot of kids like their mommies and daddies to help them fall asleep,” Elena notices. “And some kids use a thing, like a stuffy or tv, to help them,” I add.
“But look here,” I point out. “Some kids don’t use anything except their own brain to help them fall asleep. Remember that one boy who said he stays up late and is really tired the next day?”
“He needs a stuffy or something to help,” adds Elena. Elena is starting to get her heart set on making a stuffed animal.
“Or something,” I reply, trying to pull her back from solutioning.
It is so easy to prematurely jump right to solutions throughout the research process. But if you pick a favorite too early and without testing, you lose your willingness to be proven wrong. And you end up with something no one wants like Fish on Wheels.
Elena’s last step for today is to pull out the nuggets and write them down so she can refer back to them later on. These durable insights will come in handy later when she brainstorms potential solutions.
Those are some quality nuggets! And they support Elena’s customer problem statement.
But remember, it would have been totally ok if the nuggets did not support Elena’s customer problem statement. The design thinking process is about testing and learning, not passing/failing or good/bad.
The Conclusion
Kids struggle to fall asleep because they are scared of what will happen in their dreams.
Customer problem: Validated!
Want to know what Elena does next?
Follow, like, subscribe or whatever the kids are saying nowadays to get the latest update on Elena’s journey → Medium | Instagram | Linkedin | Twitter
You can also join this email list for an early bird announcement of the launch of Elena’s yet to be determined solution. She is still a ways away from this, but it’s never too early to start building your Kickstarter list!
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→ Read Part 4: Let’s ask Siri.
