This week, we brainstormed ideas for our narrowed-down How Can We statement, focusing on how we can make the task of emptying donation bags less of an undesirable chore for Magpies & Peacocks employees. We started by individually writing our thoughts on sticky notes during Open Studio. After getting all of our ideas out, we organized them into clusters as a team. We realized that our ideas had two main approaches: people oriented and space oriented solutions. People oriented solutions aimed to make the process more enjoyable and seem more feasible for the employees, while space oriented solutions were focused on setting up the space in a way that would make sorting much more convenient. After voting on the feasibility and effectiveness of our ideas, we settled on two main ideas. Our people-oriented idea was having consistent sorting sessions where volunteers and interns would get together and sort donations, with food and drink provided by M&P and music playing in the background. Our space-oriented solution involved having intermediate sorting stations that would help break down the task in order to make it easier. 

This week truly allowed us to narrow down our focus, and our team is looking forward to the next steps of the design process!