Sprint 1 – Diverge - AgileBusinessAnalysis/01_TEAM GitHub Wiki

Analyse existing solutions

Matchmaker applications are a common thing today, but comprehensive solutions to keep the match relevant are not available. A search for such solutions generally returns the apps that provide therapies and consultation. Our idea is to handle issues as they arise instead of letting them build up into big problems. We plan to provide an application to which a user may connect soon after starting a relationship and get relevant tips and advice along the journey.

After a quick search on the existing solutions to address relationship challenges, we could shortlist the following interesting apps:

Mindsail

Mindsail is a ‘mental pick-me-up’ app that offers resources for learning how to manage your emotions better. A user can describe their needs and get recommendations on learning resources that can be helpful.

BetterHelp

BetterHelp is an e-therapist app. Users can chat, email or even call a BetterHelp therapist and get advice.

Jyst

Jyst provides a forum where users can post their relationship dilemma and get responses from other users around the world. It lets the users stay anonymous. Agonyapp is another such anonymous relationship advice platform.

Happy Couple

Happy Couple is a quiz-style gaming app for couples. It asks fun questions to let users find out more about how their partner thinks. Knowing more about your partner strengthens the relation.

Lasting

Lasting is a "proactive marriage health program". This app learns about a user’s relationship and creates a personalized counseling program.

Observing the above-listed solutions shows that some of the challenges identified by us are being addressed in bits and pieces but a comprehensive solution is missing. A personalized approach as adopted by the Lasting app is what we aim for, however the solution needs to include everyday assistance for users and not only counselling.

Sketch different solutions approaches

After thoroughly exploring the challenges in Understand phase of the Sprint, we started working towards a solution for the identified challenges. Our first goal was to collect ideas that could possibly lead us towards a solution. We opted for the Crazy 8’s method.

Crazy 8's

Crazy 8's is a core Design Sprint method by Google that involves rapid rounds of sketching ideas. All four of us sat at our desks with papers and pens. We timed one minute to quickly sketch a solution to any of the challenges we had previously identified. This 1-minute activity was repeated 8 times, in the end generating a variety of ideas to inspire our solution design.

Sharing the Crazy Ideas

We sat together to share and discuss our ideas:

Laura came up with several tips for couples to get out of monotony and try new things. Date Calendar was an interesting one coming from her sketches, that can assist busy couples in formally organizing their time together. Keeping an active date calendar may help avoid many relationship problems, we all agreed.

Sidra also had few suggestions to overcome the challenges including an idea to bring up memorable pictures or events from past for helping the user in reminiscing happy moments and let go of the stress in relationship.

David had clearer ideas on how we can use data to actually extract suitable suggestions or memories. Use of data also meant that data collection will be an important of the solution. A Time Balancer was sketched by David that can be used to show a user how s/he or his/her partner is utilizing their time and how a better balance may be achieved.

Soyhan shared his idea on how questions may help address issues among couples. He came up with several suggestions for improving communication among couples, the lack of which is often the reason behind major relationship issues.

We concluded this task by another timed activity. Each of the team members had to mark top five ideas in their opinion with a stick-on in one minute. The results helped us identify a priority list of ideas.