What do you think, defines a problem? Is it the fact that somewhere in some underground university laboratory, a few white-haired professors sit stroking their beards, pondering on a particular set of equations? Is it on a piece of paper, an assignment from middle-school geometry? Is something a problem simply because Houston has officially been notified of it?
The truth is, problems are defined not by those that seek to solve them, but rather by those that are affected in the first place. Cancer is a problem that thousands upon thousands of scientists are looking to solve; yet for the millions of cancer patients, the problem isn’t about finding a cure someday. It’s about fighting the disease today. World hunger is a problem that the entire first world is interested in solving, and yet for those billions starving somewhere, they aren’t considering ending anything but their own hunger, not someday, not even tomorrow, but today.
Ultimately, design comes down to a few principles that must be overcome, regardless of what solution is implemented, what problem tackled. Design must be timely; it is enticing to think “someday”, but designing and developing for a future that doesn’t exist is about as useful as treating cancer with medicine not yet invented. Design must be scalable; if we can create a solution that feeds one starving person, it should merely be a matter of implementation to expand that solution to the entire globe. Design must be sustainable, efficient. Solutions to one problem should not come at the expense of creating a multitude of new ones. And lastly, design should just work. Solutions that are well designed are intuitive to all not due to cleverness, but rather application and introduction of ourselves, of humanity, into our designs. We are what we create.
In the end though, this isn’t about design. This is about a problem, about a need that must be addressed. We aren’t interested in using drills, but rather creating holes. The distinction is subtle, and yet its fundamental to success: we are interested in why someone needs something, not what someone needs.
So this is the open question to you, dear reader: Why? What problem do you see, around you, across the street, around the world, that you think needs a solution? It can be open-ended or specific, large or small; it needn’t even have an obvious solution. I hope you’ll take five minutes time to think of an answer and respond. I aim to collect as many of these as I can in the next week or so. And from there, I’ll go through each and every one, and we can begin discussing solutions. Will there be dead ends? Certainly. But I hope that we can find a problem that is solvable, and has an impact on someone’s anyone’s life. That’s all we can ask: to make the littlest of difference in life.
Here’s to an excellent summer.
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