Sarah Doody
Last week I was in Florida and my flight back was on a horrible travel day. Storms had closed Atlanta airport for a long time. This meant that my flight was overbooked and so the boarding process was quite competitive as everyone tried to get overhead bin space before it all filled up.
Recently I spent the day at an amusement park. After our group had gone on one of the coasters, we immediately headed for the place where you can see photos of yourselves on the rides. The photos were displayed on small little screens so you could decide if you wanted to buy it or not.
Last weekend I was out at the beach two hours from NYC. To get to the beach I take a bus. You can pay for your ticket in advance or on the bus. There’s a person on the bus that goes down the aisle and collects payment from each of the passengers. As I watched her try to balance in the aisle, I realized it’s a pretty time-consuming process. While I was sitting on the bus watching her, I had an idea.
Last week I challenged you to actively look for problems to solve – whether on your commute, at the airport, in your kitchen, or anywhere you spot something that seems to be broken or lacking in experience.
Have you ever been in a meeting and felt like you were in a giant game of telephone? I hate that feeling. A big reason this happens is because people lose context. As I like to say, problems start when context stops.
Do you know what problems you’re solving? Honestly though. Whatever project you’re working on right now, can you articulate how that project or design is solving a problem? If you can’t, then you should hit pause on everything and spend some time identifying the problem.