Asking Questions That Lead to Answers
I want to tell you about how we got to our mission statement. “Create an immersive experience of nature within indoor shelter to provide comfort and wellness.” When we started all we knew is that we wanted to design a solution to problem we didn’t yet know, in the category of nature and shelter. It first started around the idea of nature and conservation. Keeping nature within our cities.
How is nature affected when it is surrounded by man-made structures?
Is there something that we can do to increase the quality of nature within our cities?
What is the relationship between nature and our mental health, specifically within those urban areas?
As populations continue to rise within cities how high are we valuing our connection to nature?
It seems to us that the current valuation of nature is below the value of money, meaning that natural elements (such as parks and gardens) are getting pushed out as the price of land keeps rising.
Another key question to define within our problem statement is what do we consider as nature? The first and obvious thought were parks and community gardens, areas that are protected and dedicated to the well being of natural environments within urban areas.
What else is there? A lot of people like to bring nature into their homes too. Potted plants, bird houses and even caring for pets could be considered an attempt to connect better with nature. We know that people value nature, there’s a reason we have pictures of Yosemite for the background on our computer.
Can we find any scientific data on the benefits of mental health related to living and nature?
There’s tons of it. Productivity, self-esteem, social engagement, and learning all benefit from nature. Studies show that depression, social anxiety, and stress are reduced. Not having natural elements in life can be the result of living in urban settings, but what about people who work often at a desk job, how is there relationship with nature affected? We could even take that a step further couldn’t we, how about people who suffer from physical impediments between themselves and nature?
How does being deprived of natural experiences due to physical disabilities hurt mental health?
Let’s design around that.
Taking the insights that we have found from interviews, surveys and secondary research, we can boil down our original problem area (nature and shelter) to a more manageable mission statement. We asked a lot questions within our first few weeks of iteration, drawing on user-experience methods that we have refined in class. We don’t have a solution to this problem but that’s fine, were not even a third of the way through our semester yet. We found the right problem to solve for though, which makes designing the solution much easier. Stay tuned.
