Needs Analysis

Some young people (regardless of their identity group) have a desire to make a difference— they want to make their world a better place, but aren't sure where to start. This lack of social entrepreneurship knowledge may be addressed by attending training programs offered on campus. However, minority undergraduates still don't have the confidence or knowledge to give action to their ideas, even after going to information sessions and boot camps.

That's when we had the idea for Impackt: we are not the difference, we make a difference, together. We believe that by providing an educational tool with mentoring, resources and community support specifically for minority students, we can help them creating their own social entrepreneurship path.

Interview

For our design journey, we observed and interviewed undergraduate students that had expressed a desire to build positive social impact. The interviews were all in person, with open-ended questions.

Our purpose was:

To understand the ideas the students had for social impact
To understand the challenges they currently face in developing their social project
To understand what could help them in creating their social project

Our first set of questions were:

What is the change you want to see in the world?
If you had all the resources, knowledge and tools needed, what would you create?

Upon asking these questions, we delved further into understanding the mindset of the learner by asking questions targeted to their experiences and hesitations.

All participants reported that there was assistance from their schools: networking events, workshops on starting business, entrepreneurial meet-ups, and skill building bootcamps. But the students were very hesitant and showed lack of self-confidence in their responses.

Target Learner's Problem

During the process of pursuing their passion project, our target learners feel that they face specific problems as minorities, and therefore, don't start to create their project. By interviewing our target learners, we mapped their needs and some insights for Impackt.

Insights

Based on the interview and literature review data, we know that minority students relate more to people who are from similar backgrounds. Therefore, we think that an interactive learning experience with successful local minority social entrepreneurs as mentors, resources for minority students and a community of minority social entrepreneurs, will increase their ability in starting their passion project.

Impackt Information Sheet_Amanda Luz Silva, Steven Williamson, Naima Rashid.pdf