Converting Stakeholder Prompts into Actionable Questions

As we’ve discussed, interpreting the needs of stakeholders and deriving answerable questions from their problem statements can be really hard. Yesterday, I gave some pretty simple, clean prompts. Today, let’s try working with some much uglier (and thus more realistic) prompts!

Exercise 1

Congratulations! You’ve been hired by International Motors Conglomerate of America, a leading car manufacturer. In your first meeting, they announced the following:

In recent years, we’ve found that our customers are really excited about “driver safety enhancements” like emergency braking, or lane departure warnings. We want to keep innovating in this area. It seems like drowsy driving would be a cool thing to address. Can you design an eye tracking system that uses machine learning to see when people are drowsy and then squirts water in their face to wake them up?

Now in your group, develop answers to the following questions:

1.1) What is the core need / problem of your stakeholder?

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1.2) What solutions have they proposed to address their core need?

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1.3) What Exploratory Question, if answered, would help you address the core need of your stakeholder?

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1.4) What Passive Prediction Question, if answered, would help you address the core need of your stakeholder?

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1.5) What Causal Question, if answered, would help you address the core need of your stakeholder?

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Exercise 2:

You’ve been hired by a hospital network interested in reducing patient falls. They tell you the following:

Patients falls are costing us a fortune. Not only are they bad for patient outcomes—patients who fall also tend to be patients who are weaker and are more prone to serious injury when they fall—but we also keep getting sued! We’ve been giving our patients activity trackers for another study, and we want to use that data to identify which patients are fall risks. Can you help us?

but we also keep getting sued! We’ve been giving our patients activity trackers for another study, and we want to use that data to identify which patients are fall risks. Can you help us?

Now in your group, develop answers to the following questions:

2.1) What is the core need / problem of your stakeholder?

..

2.2) What solutions have they proposed to address their core need?

..

2.3) What Exploratory Question, if answered, would help you address the core need of your stakeholder?

..

2.4) What Passive Prediction Question, if answered, would help you address the core need of your stakeholder?

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2.5) What Causal Question, if answered, would help you address the core need of your stakeholder?

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