For Life Centered Research, we were asked to identify how the pandemic has affected office workers. Furthermore, we were asked to focus our research with limits on our scope of action - that we could focus all actionable research, insights and solutions within the scope of self. That meant that we focus on problems that affected people in their personal lives. The main filter through which the ideas had to pass was whether the focus was on what a person could do to offset the ill-effects of the pandemic & work-at-home environments. 

Through reflection on our personal experiences in the workforce during the pandemic and from expert interviews, we collected the initial data that set us up for the area that we would focus on.

In Costa Rica, a country with one major city and a lot of rural areas, we found that there were a lot of people who moved into San José for work. This left them physically cut off from a community that they grew up with. We now knew the type of person we were looking for. We interviewed many people who lived through or were living through the situation we identified, which enabled us to craft an opportunity statement that further narrowed the scope of our solution’s actions. 

This got us to F.A.M. A solution designed to help give a shy person that extra nudge to socialize and reflect about their interactions with new people in community events. The app prototype that we made walks through the flow of how the solution is focused on a person’s anticipation before going to the event and the subsequent reflections and interactions with new people.