“First of all, thank you for your patience in waiting for the results.

Unfortunately, work smacked me hard over the past few months. Trust me, I’ve been in this competition before, and many others, and I know how gruelling the wait can be. I hope you’d forgive me for not coming back sooner.

Now on to the work! I know this brief was a very complex one, and I am so impressed that a lot of you put in a great deal of effort into understanding this multifaceted issue.

I evaluated the work, like any solutions I see, from four lenses:


1. Empathy:
Does the solution show a clear understanding of the problem, and the consumer?

Do you truly understand the who, how and why behind what influenced this innocent person to descend into extremism? Just as with any brief, this is the most important bit. As Einstein said, “If I had 60 minutes to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes understanding the problem, and 5 minutes solving it.”


2. Viability:
Is your proposal a legit, insightful, well thought through solution to the problem?

There were some solutions that seemed to preach to the converted, or assume that someone with radical views would turn just because you say that the extremist person they are listening to (who at this point they see as a hero) is radical without even showing why.


3. Feasibility/Usability:
Is the solution technically sound and feasible?

Is the user experience and user journey simple and easy to understand or too complex?

I did give myself a little room for imagination here for what a platform may go out of its way to change for this good cause. Or how accurate semantic analysis could be (it isn’t, yet). But there were quite a few solutions that were simply not practical (e.g., there were a few that proposed secretly installing software on your phone to allow parents or friends to spy on potentially even harmless conversations).

On the other end of the spectrum, I had some solutions that were basically photocopies of existing solutions, like the Redirect Method. I get that great artists steal, but innovation isn’t a 100% copy + paste; it’s copying, adapting and innovating the existing solution, and then pasting.


4. Beauty:
I also looked at craft. How much effort was put into the art direction, user interface design, storytelling and copywriting.

This is the icing on the cake that’ll make an already good idea a great one. However, if the idea wasn’t insightful, viable or feasible to begin with, then all you have is icing but no cake.

While there were a lot of ideas that were good from a few of the above lenses, unfortunately, no idea stood out enough from all four lenses to earn itself a Gold.

But please, do not let that discourage you. For every idea that I worked on that were ok from each of these lenses, I probably had a hundred more that failed in one of these aspects. We all learn, grow and get better.

I’m proud that you took on and immersed yourself in this complex brief, and at the very least, had an idea that looked good from at least one of these lenses. Keep pushing yourself and greatness is sure to follow. And when it does, don’t forget to give me a job offer!”