Define is an important part of the design thinking process. The reason is because it sets the tone and guides all of the activities that follow with that  (Dam and Siang). Basically, in the design mode you end up creating an actionable problem statement that is commonly known as Point of View in design thinking. In one of the articles, it talks about how you should always base your point of view on a deeper understanding of your specific users, what their needs are and your insights about them as a designer. The POV is something that should provide a wide enough scope for you and your team to start thinking about some solutions for the problem.

In class, we used the define method to help design something for roommates between the ages of 18-25. This was a whole process in one when we did this. We used an empathy map, and this helped us to empathize and come to an answer for the problem of living with roommates. This map was a whole entire process that made our class put our own experiences as roommates and were able to relate and come up with ideas to define the problem. We used the needs column to match certain words to specific experiences to define the problem. This type of exercise was helpful to create a point of view because we were able to use these need words to define specific roommate situations.

As mentioned above POV helps define the right challenge to address in the following mode in the design thinking process. This is the ideation mode. Having a good POV will be veryhelpful to allow the designer to ideate and solve their own design challenge in a goal-oriented way. This will help you keep a focus on your users, their needs and your insights about them (Dam and Siang). 

Basically your point of view should be a guiding way that helps you focus on specific users, and insights and needs that you uncovered during the empathize mode. It is extremely important to have a point of view statement because it is more than just defining a problem to work on. Having the point of view side of this process helps create a different way for the design vision to be seen as. Having an understanding about the meaningful challenge to address and the insights you can fix in your design work is a base to creating a solution that is successful to your problem.

In conclusion, the define mode is one of the many important steps in the design thinking process. This helps created a point of view to create a better understanding in order to come up with a solution for this design thinking process.