The document discusses meeting with recent university graduates to understand their transition to the workforce. From these conversations, the author developed a problem statement for an undergraduate design student seeking a competitive advantage. The author then generated 50 potential solutions, prototyped two ideas, and refined a pop-up showcase of the student's designs based on feedback to create the final solution.

1. I met with several students (whom I know personally, as I myself only graduated university one year
ago and a lot of my peers are still there, about to make the school-to-work transition. I asked many
questions, and listened to everything they had to say, what they didn’t say, and speculated on what
they were thinking and feeling.
From then, I was able to create my problem statement for a design student:
A detail-oriented, motivated, creative, opportunistic undergraduate and hopeful
designer needs a way to gain a competitive advantage and place herself at the
top of the graduate cohort because the design industry is incredibly
competitive, and experience at the undergraduate level is often unpaid.
I came up with 50 ideas, some realistic and some
‘blue sky’
I took two of these ideas, and built physical prototypes of them.
The one that stuck was a Guerrilla pop-up show case of the
designer’s designs
Having tested the different ideas, we built upon the stronger one
and I used her feedback to redesign the prototype, and thus final
solution, to best suit my users needs.