Try the first lesson free, practice questions included. Pick your student's grade band.
All three grade bands of Make Something Matter: $69 for the set. Every signature course is also included with Check-in, College Prep, Weekly Accountability and the Caveat Academy pass.
Every invention starts with someone noticing that something is not working well. A backpack strap that keeps slipping, a hallway that gets jammed between classes, a park bench with no shade. Most people see these things and shrug. A problem noticer stops and asks, "Why is this happening, and could it be better?"
In this course you will learn to find real problems, design ideas to solve them, build simple models, test them and share what you learned. That whole process is called creative problem-solving. It is a skill, which means you get better at it with practice.
Problems hide in three main places in your life. Looking in each one on purpose helps you find more of them.
| Place | What to watch for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Things that get lost, broken, messy or forgotten | Phone chargers get tangled behind the couch. |
| School | Delays, crowding, confusion, wasted materials | Students forget which days they need gym shoes. |
| Community | Safety, comfort, access, waste | The bike rack at the library is always full. |
Designers often keep a bug list. A bug is anything that annoys, slows down or frustrates someone. You do not need to solve a bug right away. You just write it down. Later, you choose the best ones to work on.
| problem | A gap between how things are and how they should be. |
| bug | A small annoyance or frustration you notice in daily life. |
| creative problem-solving | A step-by-step way of finding problems and inventing useful solutions. |
Notice that the bug describes what happens, not a solution. "We need a robot cereal sealer" jumps to an answer too fast. Keep your bug list focused on the problem itself.
Most projects fail for a simple reason: they solve a problem nobody actually has. A student builds a clever phone stand, but the people around them never wanted one. The fix is to start with people, not with your idea. Before you design anything, you listen.
Designers call this stage empathy research. Empathy means understanding a situation from someone else's point of view. The two main tools are observation, which means watching what people actually do, and interviews, which means asking them about it. What people do and what they say often differ, so you need both.
A closed question can be answered with yes, no or a single fact, such as "Do you like the library?" An open question invites a story, such as "Tell me about the last time you studied in the library." Open questions reveal details you did not know to ask about. Closed questions are useful later, when you need to count or confirm something.
| Weak interview question | Stronger version | Why it is stronger |
|---|---|---|
| Would you use an app that reminds you to drink water? | How do you keep track of water during a school day? | It does not push your idea, so you hear the real habit. |
| You lose things a lot, right? | When was the last time you lost something at school? What happened? | It avoids a leading question that suggests the answer. |
Most strong projects begin with a strong problem, not a clever idea. If you start with a gadget or an app you want to build, you may spend weeks making something nobody needs. If you start with a real problem that real people face, every later decision has a reason behind it.
A symptom is what you notice on the surface. A root cause is the reason the symptom keeps happening. Lockers jammed with lost-and-found clothing are a symptom. The root cause might be that students do not know where the lost-and-found is, or that items are never labeled. Solving a symptom gives a short-lived fix. Solving a root cause can change the pattern.
One simple tool for digging deeper is the five whys. You state the problem, ask why it happens, then ask why again about each answer. You stop when you reach a cause you could realistically act on. Five is a guideline, not a rule.
Scope is the size and boundary of your project. An ambitious problem stretches you, but the scope must fit your time, money and skills. Ending food waste in your city is too broad for one student. Reducing produce waste at one pantry by a measurable amount over two months is ambitious and possible.
A problem statement is one or two sentences that name who is affected, what the problem is, where and when it happens, and why it matters. It does not include your solution. Keeping the solution out lets you stay open to better ideas later.
The Caveat Family Guide to High School is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Each college decides admission, aid and how credit counts, and requirements change; check each college's own pages. Examples are examples, not promises. Caveat Academic Services is an independent college preparation company. Students do all of their own work.