Re-Pivoting
Listening to your intuition and getting help
This week marked a pretty crucial point in our RE: group. We spent the end of the fall semester and the beginning of the spring brainstorming and prototyping ideas for physical products to help pedestrians feel safer at night. Although this was of interest to us, there seemed to be an underlying feel of indifference toward the things we were coming up with. Doing a thorough competitive analysis was also discouraging, as there were literally hundreds of products out there that did similar functions of physical products that we were looking. The saturation of this market was length and seemed like people had been trying to tackle this for years.
The idea for the pivot hadn’t begun to form until Gia and I went to a self-defense class. After the class and speaking with the instructor, we felt empowered. We also we instilled with the idea that confidence and knowledge of your surroundings are more powerful than any physical product. The physical products seem to be rooted in fear, while empowering the self had a much more all-encompassing impact. It placed value on the self, that your life was worth defending. This got the gears turning. Nevertheless, we continued to pursue physical products, but started toying with the idea of some way to make these empowered self-defense classes accessible to the world. The seed was planted.
I had a discussion with some classmates about our project, and afterwards, I became convinced that taking the physical product route was not the right direction. It would only make the problem worse, rather than trying to solve it from its root cause. Only further victimizing the women. We’d be adding to the fear and anxiety placed upon women to protect themselves. Grated, by being encouraged to take empowered self-defense instruction, we’d still be placing some of the responsibility of women, but this definitely stepping in a much better direction. You’re improving the self, giving women the ability to set boundaries, say no, use body language as a prevention strategy, and so much more. And the best part is, we’re excited about this new direction.
A massive resource that we stumbled upon that we have to give recognition to is Jocelyn Hollander. She is a professor at the department of sociology at University of Oregon. The research that she has done around empowered self-defense class is remarkable. We’ve been reading a good portion of her published papers and become very inspired. She speaks of the impact of ESD (empowered self-defense) not only reducing the risk of assault, but also how it has the potential to shift gender norms and improve the overall self.
We’re looking at solutions currently and there are a couple different routes we can take. But we really want to make it more of a “lifestyle” app. Encompassing a multitude of purposes. We are inspired by apps like Headspace and Dualingo. Headspace as far as the self-help aspect goes, and Dualingo as far as the gamification goes. We’re looking for a positive behavioral change among our potential consumers.
This was a lesson in listening to intuition. I’m thankful for my classmates, but I think this problem could have also been solved but sitting down with my team members and discussing this in detail, which structure. Being aware of those feelings, bringing them to light, and doing something about it. I knew that was something wrong, I just wasn’t sure what it was.
This a little bit of a rambling, unstructured post which means I really need to improve on explain this concept and our next steps, but it’s in the early stages of planning and fleshing out, and we’re excited about it. Looking forward to what comes next!
