Time to Hack Community Projects: 3 Guidelines for Writing Problem Statements

Community projects are everywhere. They’re in our homes, on our streets, in our schools, and in our government. They live right under our noses and hover around our daily thoughts. How many times a day do you brainstorm the best ways to avoid traffic, or how your neighborhood could be improved? The hard part isn’t in determining community projects, it’s being able to recognize one when the irritation strikes. The best way is to simply ask yourself these two questions:

- What are my largest pain points?

- Do these pain points affect others?

This should help you figure out if a problem is worth exploring. The next step is to craft your problem statement.

Insert Problem Here

In order to write a problem statement, you must truly focus on the problem at hand. You aren’t writing about the traffic lights and all the buses and all the carbon monoxide in the air from the idling cars in rush hour. When I’m brainstorming, I have a tendency to go on mental tangents that blur my focus, or I attach too many auxiliary problems to my main concern that I become overwhelmed. Instead, spend the time to map out the actual problem and think through each aspect.

This is also the point that I start involving design thinking. For example, if the problem is that there aren’t enough marked bike lanes in the city, then thinking about who is riding bikes and why can start to govern both the design and the solution.

This brings me to my next tip, which is letting the end-user guide you. Focus on the problem through the eyes of those who suffer from it, which may include you, but be sure to think of as many different personas as you can. At this point, it’s best to do some research and interviews.

At a recent hackathon in Houston, I was part of team working on supporting public defenders that needed immediate access to collateral consequence data while working with clients in a high-pressure time window. Most of us on the team needed to talk with several lawyers and visually walk through the steps of what our personas — the lawyers and the clients — were facing. We had to dive deep into the actual situation in order to fully grasp the exact problem we were solving for. It’s important to take your time here and give this an intentional effort, lest you offer a solution that is unworkable or that doesn’t solve the real issue. The payoff for research and concentrating on the end-user is tremendous.

Tubman Project | Houston Hackathon 2017

Insert Imagination Here

Another tip is to use your imagination. Go right off the deep end with possible solutions and have fun with it. I say this lightly, but I am adamant about this, in part because 99% of the problems we’re trying to solve aren’t new, which means that traditional solutions are already being used (and are often ineffective). If you can’t let yourself be creative, you’ll never imagine new ways to approach traffic, bike lanes, or even poverty — this is key to harnessing the latent power of technology for the public good.

Personally, I can sometimes struggle with letting my imagination run its course, regardless of what comes to mind. I find that silence, my environment, and my energy levels play a big role in my process, so I take care to be mindful of these elements when I’m trying to play or be creative. I usually go on short walks outside to reenergize and think about all possible solutions — both in the short term and the long term. Alone, without judgment, I can ignore all limitations and dream of what could be.

Insert Parameters Here

My last tip is grounding yourself after floating around in fantasy solutions. While hover cars would essentially “solve” many traffic issues, there are countless limitations to using this as a solution to traffic and focusing time and energy on this solution wouldn’t be very productive. Instead, I need to understand all of the limiting factors for my problem statement: time, resources, skills, user research, and usability. The grounding process can begin to dictate whether this is a multiple-stage project and what can be accomplished within the confines of a hackathon.

With these tips in mind, the problem statement you build out (either alone or with a team) will not only be impactful, but also effective with the delivery. Let’s recap before I share some examples of problem statements I’ve helped craft and their hackathon solutions:

1. Focus on the actual problem (as a woman of many tangents, I can attest to how important it is to stay aligned.)

2. After you have your initial problem statement worked out, it’s time to run with the unicorns.

3. Then recognize that your unicorns are in an arena with boundaries and scale back to reality.

Examples of Problem Statements:  We need to conserve water in Texas I can’t find our lost pets Our homeless shelter doesn’t get enough donations I can’t ride my bike safely in my city The bees are dying

Civic Technology Solutions to above Statements:  Smart water sprinkler system Online pet portal  Donation mobile app Interactive web bike lane app Hive monitoring app

I frequently host problem statement workshops for clients and would be MORE than happy to run through a few exercises with folks to hear what ideas they have and how we can refine problem statements together. Also, if you’re trying to pitch your problem to gain community support, I have some more readily defined criteria and activities that we can work through on how to craft a powerful problem statement where people instantly understand what you’re doing and feel compelled to support you.

Let’s talk at experimentalcivcs.io and get to writing your problem statement! I’m sending each of you positive vibes and I’m here to help if you need me — together we can change the world, one problem at a time!