Week 2 of the IDEO + Acumen HCD course and we're knee deep in our research! This week we were asked to choose a design challenge to work on. After rating the choices, we decided on Challenge #3: How might we enable more young people to become social entrepreneurs?

Before we started talking about our design challenge, we discussed what caught our attention in the latest readings. For me, it was the analogous experiences that truly captured my attention. I found it most interesting because I've never seen it that way. Inspiration can come from anywhere! There were examples of a low budget library redesigned from the experience of an apple store where people flow from one row to the next smoothly or how race car pit stops compare to the experience of surgery since they utilize delicate equipment in a fixed amount of time. It's such a great discovery!

And so the brief goes: While more and more youth are interested in social entrepreneurship as a means for tackling some of the world's toughest challenges, many aspiring social entrepreneurs fail to move beyond the initial idea phase because of the infrastructure to support them is lacking. Some are unable to access to networks or mentors that could provide the knowledge and experience to confront major decisions, while others lack the capital they need to start their venture.

We first talked about what we already knew. Some of which are:

- Commitment at a young age is an issue.
- Young entrepreneurs don't have capital.
- There's a paradigm that startups are too risky and is not as reputable a career choice at an early age.
- Many investors don't trust the youth.
- Progressive improvements are still valid.
- There's an assumption that it costs more than it has to.

We then started asking questions! For example, what are the current available support? What's the process of incubation? Are there government funds for young entrepreneurs?

This week we're embarking on the journey of researching through talking to our users, contacting experts in the field, and immersing ourselves in their environment. That's it for this week's HCD course! Will be posting our findings soon!