Step 1. Create Your Problem Description
Your first step is to write a description of your problem.
Don’t worry if your description seems limited, imprecise, or inaccurate. In the next step, after some inquiry and research, you will write a more robust version of this initial description.
Describe your problem in 50–100 words and simple language. Everyone involved in the problem should be able to understand your description.
Examples of problem descriptions:
Example A
The management of a medium-sized robotics company wants to balance their desire for engineers to be inventive, independent, and innovative when working on their assigned projects with the organizational need for alignment, coordination, and budget control. This balance is proving hard to achieve, and the level of innovation in the company’s products is suffering.
Example B
In some large cities in China, numerous former rural villages are being rapidly urbanized along with the surrounding built environment due to the dualistic land system between urban and rural areas. These villages accommodate a large number of low-income migrants and are low-quality, high-density informal settlements. The crowded environment and hardening of roads in these villages aggravate the urban heat island effect, which is becoming worse due to increasingly frequent extreme heat waves.
Example C
Undergraduate students at MIT choose their major during the second semester of the first year of their studies. While this choice is essential for students’ future lives and careers, it is often done in a way that is rushed, unsystematic, and uninformed, leading to potentially negative effects down the road.
