Module 1 · Understanding the user Lesson 2 of 15
Turning notes into a problem statement
One sentence naming who the user is, what they are trying to do, and what is in the way. Everything you design afterwards either serves that sentence or does not belong.
The concept
Raw notes are a mess of symptoms. A problem statement is one sentence of cause: "Final-year students do not know which skill to learn first, so they start five courses and finish none." It names who, what is going wrong and what it costs them — and it is specific enough to be proved wrong, which is what makes it useful.
Write it on the wall and test every design decision against it. If a screen does not serve that sentence, it is decoration. This one paragraph is also what your portfolio case study opens with, and what an interviewer will ask you to justify.
Who: final-year commerce students in tier-2 cities
What: they do not know which skill to learn first
Cost: they start five courses and finish none
"Final-year commerce students in tier-2 cities do not know which
skill to learn first, so they start five courses and finish none."
Test it: could you tell whether you had fixed it? If not, narrow it.Common mistakes
The mistake is a statement so broad that nothing can be measured: "job seekers find job hunting hard". Narrow it until you could tell whether you had fixed it, then keep the research notes that led there — the evidence is what a reviewer wants to see, not the tidy conclusion.
Worked example
"Final-year students applying from a phone abandon multi-step forms when asked for documents they do not have at hand" is a problem a designer can act on.
Your practice task
Write a problem statement from your three interviews, and delete every design idea in it that is actually a solution.
Do this before moving on. Reading a solution teaches the shape of it; typing it teaches you.
Key takeaway
Raw notes are a mess of symptoms.
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