For this phase of the mentorship, I focussed on familiarizing myself with my mentor and creating a strong foundation for my project to rest on. Initially, I had a hard time choosing a project idea/concept to pursue. I didn’t really have any preference in mind, only that I wanted to create a digital product that could help people (versus a commercial motivation). One of my stronger ideas in the very first week involved helping people in quarantine with learning how to restructure and rearrange their homes so that they could have a better space to exercise in, as I know that space can be limited for many people. However, the idea was lofty and complicated and lacked a direction. Nor did I have a vision for what the solution would be. When I brought up these concerns with my mentor, she suggested talking to my classmates and peers about what challenges they face during the lockdown and start from there.
After a successful chat with many of my friends, I discovered a common problem that many people—not just university students—face. Life pre-Covid was full of surprises that kept our lives from becoming one giant grey box. However, with quarantine, many people found themselves stuck in a repetitive loop and even feel trapped within their homes. Time had no meaning and days blurred together; people were missing spontaneity in their lives. Thus, I set out to design a digital app that would help keep people’s daily lives interesting and fun. Just because people lived in a box, didn’t mean that they had to live in a “box”.
During my meeting with my mentor, I learned many valuable skills and gained much feedback for my project brief. I was able to refine the brief with her help and successfully plot out a realistic timeline for the next six weeks and which milestones I should hit each week. In addition, she gave me good tips and resources on how I should approach interviewing individuals for my research. For example, starting with a research question and setting goals before the interview to help structure the questions.
I was able to interview 3 of my classmates this weekend and rewardingly, was also able to gain very valuable insights as to how they approach their free time in quarantine as well as their interactions with existing digital products. The interviews went smoothly and some, with a little more probing were able to give me information on how important certain features and functions would be in my app. The only challenge I faced was compiling information from each interview into a digestible list of points that I could then compare to each other for common themes. Overall, I would rate myself 10/10 for being able to be so motivated for this project and completing my milestones on time within a short time frame. Kudos!