How do you tackle a societal issue that has no solution — a so-called “wicked” problem, like food insecurity, behavioral health or the loneliness epidemic?
That was the challenge taken up by two dozen North Carolina Central University students during a Designing for Social Good workshop February 28 on the NCCU campus.
The Eshelman Innovation Venture Studio and Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) of Rocky Mount co-sponsored the event, which was led by the California-based HBCU Founders Initiative, a national nonprofit that aims to decrease the wealth gap by empowering Historically Black College/University students and alumni to launch tech ventures.
During the fun, adrenaline-fueled Saturday, four teams of five students competed for cash prizes to build the most promising entrepreneurial solution to one of those three wicked problems.
“By the end of the day, we want you to have something you can actually launch, something you can literally show the world,” said workshop leader Ty Smith.
A tall order — to start from scratch and build a launchable digital prototype in a seven-hour day. Was it even possible?
Human-centered problem solving
Smith began by giving the students a crash course in design thinking, an iterative process for human-centered problem-solving that unpacks issues, challenges and assumptions. Design thinking is based on four key steps: empathizing with intended users, defining specific problems, ideating around those problems, building prototypes, testing prototypes and then reiterating the prototypes, making improvements that reflect what the intended customers need from the solution.
“This design-thinking tool set is a superpower, which you can use throughout both your educational and professional journey,” Smith told the students.
Innovators can spend months working through design-thinking steps. Given the time limitations, each NCCU team used an AI-driven simulation software called SymStudio to create customer personas to fill in some of the blanks. Teams refined the personas and drew clues about their needs and desires from the biographical data given for each.
To confirm the data received from the SymStudio, the students also found real humans to interview. Noting that loneliness is a problem on college campuses, one team tracked down fellow NCCU students and asked them about their own experiences feeling lonely. A team working on food insecurity gained valuable insights from two invited guests: Scott Brummel, Assistant Director for Food Security and Nutrition at Duke University, and Robert Alston from Raleigh’s Black Farmers Hub.
From Brummel, for example, the team learned that some hospital emergency rooms supply nutritious food to low-income patients when they leave the ER. But follow-up distribution is difficult. Food distribution is an issue for Alston, too, as not all community members have transportation to get to the Black Farmers Hub.
Drawing on these insights, the food insecurity team homed in on a central question: How can we improve access to nutritious food for low-income community members, including ER patients? They brainstormed ideas for improving food distribution using technology.
Their solution? A web application called Feeding the Future that connects surplus food from community gardens, local restaurants and grocery stores with those who need it most. Think Uber Eats for the food insecure. But how does one turn an idea for an app into a working app prototype during a seven-hour workshop?
This is where the real AI magic happened.
