Pre-work, about 15 minutes

Problem worksheet

Choose a real problem from your field placement, job or project and answer in a few sentences each. In the workshop, the pair interview and your spec start from these answers.

Describe people by role only (for example, "volunteer coordinator"), with no names or details that could identify a client. Your answers are saved in this browser only and are never sent anywhere. When you finish, download them as a Word file and bring the file to the workshop on your laptop; in the workshop you will paste your answers into your project spec. Printing is optional.

1. Who is the tool for, and what problem do they face?

2. How is the problem handled now, and where does that fall short?

3. What should the tool do?

Two or three things are enough. A tool built in 45 minutes does one job well.

4. (Optional) Do you know of similar apps or tools? What do they lack?

Example

1. The program manager of an after-school youth program, who has to report monthly attendance at each site to a funder and cannot see which youth no longer attend until the report is due.
2. Staff record attendance in a shared spreadsheet, and the manager spends two days each month counting visits by hand; errors such as duplicate entries are found only when the funder asks.
3. A dashboard that reads the attendance spreadsheet, shows visits by site and month, flags duplicate entries, and lists youth with no visit in the past three weeks.
4. The agency has spreadsheet software, but building pivot tables each month takes time that staff do not have, and its business intelligence tools require licenses and training the program does not have.

Problem ideas

• A paper form or checklist that someone later retypes.
• A spreadsheet that several people edit and nobody trusts.
• Information clients ask for again and again, such as hours, eligibility or documents to bring.
• A report that takes hours to assemble each month from the same sources.