Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge:

I’m a final year undergraduate student in an Indian College. The college administration

invited final years for discussions to develop measures to make our campus more friendly for

women. On discussing about this issue with our female friends in college, we arrived at our

problem statement: “Promoting Gender Equity in Campus”. Our campus is very

conservative. While men are given enough freedom to do as they wish throughout the day,

women are confined within their hostels post a 9 PM curfew. The issue of Promoting Gender

Equity in Campus could be considered a “wicked problem”.

Tool Selection:

To tackle this wicked problem, we made use of the tool: Storytelling. Storytelling engages

people and allows us to understand their unarticulated needs as they share their experiences

and values (Ref. Week 2 Lecture4 https://www.coursera.org/learn/uva-darden-design-

thinking-innovation/lecture/PAXCd/storytelling-tool). It explains the interconnections among

people in situations and settings, and teaches broad lessons that engage real human beings.

Stories generate questions, questions expand the breadth and depth of stories and this leads to

lots of innovative thoughts and ideas.

Tool Application:

We invited both male and female friends to talk about their routines. As they shared their

routines, the female friends observed the striking differences between their routines and the

routines of our male friends. We made use of journals maintained by our friends to

understand their needs better. We also asked our friends to imagine a situation where they

would be free to do as they wish and then asked them to narrate what they imagined.

Insight:

The female friends unanimously agreed that the 9 PM curfew was the main problem which

inhibited them from doing something that one of our male friends could do at night (Like

going to a shop within campus to eat noodles or access our computer centre). However, they

also agreed that the curfew was an assurance to their parents that they were safe. So we

finally suggested the administration to introduce curfew free zones for women within campus

(other than hostel) where they could spend time even post curfew, and make the curfew time

10 PM instead of 9 PM. The administration tried this for one month (before we had to come

back home due to lockdown). So far, the results have been promising. The women in our

campus could enjoy more freedom without any compromise on their safety.

Approach:

An alternative approach that could be used is Mind Mapping. Mind Mapping will help in

looking for patterns and themes in the data concerning the routines of female students (Ref.

Week 3 Lecture 4 https://www.coursera.org/learn/uva-darden-design-thinking-

innovation/lecture/lsFRa/mind-mapping-tool). This can kick start the idea generation process

which can help in developing ideas to look at our problem statement with a different

perspective. We haven’t tried this alternate approach, but I’m sure this approach would give

some amazing ideas to tackle the problem of Promoting Gender Equity in Campus.

