From Insight to Clarity “What’s the problem?” Your team looks up at you expectantly. Maya has just voiced the question that’s on everybody’s mind. People on the team begin throwing out ideas rapid fire. “Wait!” you find yourself saying. “Let’s step back and reframe the problem before we define it.” Good move. But does your… Continue reading Reframing the Problem:
Category: STEM
From Notes to Insight:
Organizing What You’ve Learned “What next?” I wondered as I sat at my desk looking at stacks of papers. I was working on a big design project for…let’s call them ABC. I’d interviewed people, observed their routines, and asked probing questions. Now I was sitting amidst a pile of material: my notes, photos, diagrams, and… Continue reading From Notes to Insight:
From Research to Real Understanding
How Problem Statements Get Better Let’s say you’ve done your desk scan. You’ve learned what programs exist, who the key players are, and where the gaps might be. You’re ready to dive into fieldwork and start talking to people. Right? Here’s where some founders skip ahead too quickly. They gather great insights from interviews and… Continue reading From Research to Real Understanding
Journey Mapping for Social Entrepreneurs
Part 1: What a Journey Map Is (and Why It Matters) As you plan for your social enterprise, you’ve covered a lot of ground already. You’ve done interviews, reflected on the broader community context, and created a persona grounded in real research. You now know how your community partners move through their day, make decisions… Continue reading Journey Mapping for Social Entrepreneurs
Personas:
How to Turn Deep-Dive Research into Human Insight In the previous post, we explored what personas are and why they matter in social entrepreneurship and design thinking. This post focuses on the practical question: how do you create a persona from your deep-dive research? Remember Maria from Part 1? She’s not a real person, but… Continue reading Personas:
Happy New Year!
Join Us in Celebrating the Potential of 2026 May 2026 be an exceptional and significant year for everyone! Published on the first and third Fridays of the month. Next post is Friday, January 16th.
Creating Personas in Your Deep Dive:
A Practical Guide for Social Entrepreneurs What if you could use your deep dive research to sketch a realistic portrait of your ideal client? Then you could design with a specific type of person in mind, rather than a fuzzy abstraction. You could design for someone with a schedule, competing priorities, and a life that… Continue reading Creating Personas in Your Deep Dive:
Diving In:
How to Do a Quick Orientation (Desk Scan) for Your Social Enterprise Idea (Part 1 in the “Assessing Community Need” series) “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know that ain’t so.” —attributed to Mark Twain In the last post, we looked at why a Deep Dive was… Continue reading Diving In:
When Interviews Go Astray:
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them Even the best-planned empathy interviews sometimes take wrong turns. You may prepare carefully, yet still find things don’t go as planned. Maybe your questions don’t come out the way you hoped, your interviewee gives short answers, or the conversation suddenly feels tense. That’s normal. Interviewing is a skill… Continue reading When Interviews Go Astray:
How to Interview for Empathy and Information
Jessica Jackley interviewed entrepreneurs over coffee, UCI students explored small farmers’ experiences in online conversations, and IDEO designers walked hospital rounds with nurses. How might you connect with your community partners to gain empathy insights? We know why empathy interviews are crucial for social entrepreneurs (as we covered in Part 1), so now let’s turn… Continue reading How to Interview for Empathy and Information