Challenge  I am Chilean, a country that always has been suffering natural disasters. Just as an example, we  have a bad record of having the strongest earthquake in history.

That brought to my friends and I -all passionate about innovation- to think about one challenge,  how to help in a natural disaster, which involves earthquakes, forest fires, tsunami, among others.

But the challenge is open wide, could be something related to the prevention (if possible), during  the evacuation, or after the disaster. Could be related to the construction or with the people, just  everything that will make our lives safer and better in that context.

Selection & Application  First, our team decided to narrow down the initial challenge. We decided to be focus on the  people and help them directly. Therefore, we took the storytelling approach, we wanted to put  the people, the affected ones, in the center.

For that, we went to talk with people on the streets asking about what were they doing before,  during, and after the 2010's earthquake in Chile (8.8 on the Richter scale).

That is how we found Antonio, 19 years old guy who is in a wheelchair. We heard his story. He was  on the 10th floor of a building at the moment of the earthquake. His father had to bring him  downstairs while a friend brought the chair. It was extremely complicated.

Insight  We asked Antonio and his dad about solutions on the market, they immediately answered that  there are several kinds of electric wheelchairs but all of them expensive. Some other accessories  but just in the US and expensive too.

So we were asking ourselves how many people could suffer a similar problem when they need to  evacuate a building, how many people are in a wheelchair and what happened if there is nobody  that could bring you downstairs. We figured out that almost 10% of the Chilean population uses a  wheelchair (including old people and people with disabilities).

Approach  Telling this story helped us to generate empathy with the audience, in that moment we were  standing in Antonio´s and his father´s shoes. Also, it was useful to have in mind our user or client if  you like, we found a problem and we were clear about our segment.

