Thinking around the System
Last week we started the class with watching a video created by IBM focussing on the importance of the little things and how they fit the broader picture. This was portrayed by zooming out and zooming in using powers of 10. Really shows how humans such as you and I form such a tiny part of the universe. This helped us put into perspective the relevance of correctly analysing the system surrounding our product and how it will impact various elements of the system.
No product or company exists in isolation. We are constantly surrounded by systems. This is why prior to launch of any new development, firms conduct a PESTL analysis. This refers to Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal analysis. These factors surround our environment and it is imperative that we understand how each of these impact our target audience, product development opportunities and success.
We used this learning to recognise what environment our problem exists in. Our focus issue for Apple + Mental Health is loneliness. Why are people lonely? Starting from our own personal experience, being away from home and family is the number one reason for loneliness among young students and professionals. Now put this in a broader frame, lack of companionship. Now these factors can be grouped — students feel lonely when pressured with schoolwork, affected by social groups within their school or university. Similarly working individuals feel pressure from work, deadlines. More factors can be grouped such as social media, feelings of being ‘left out’, FOMO (Fear of missing out).
Now that was the system surrounding the problem. What surrounds the product? Our product — the ‘FwendBot’ is a virtual chatbot that will be developed to engage in friendly conversation with the individual operating it after it analyses the personality, thoughts and characteristics of the individual. It will then train itself to respond in ways that best serve the individual. The factors surrounding the product would be level of friendliness, similarity — it should use similarly language, act like it is of similar age, share hobbies with the user, it should be non-judgemental.
Products can not be created in a vacuum and thinking and viewing problems and solutions in a system is one of the key elements for success.