Opportunity Mapping
The first introduction to maps for me was in school where we had to plot rivers, mountains, cities, etc. on already drawn maps. The second sort of map we were later introduced to were topographical maps. These maps were characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief, usually using contour lines (connecting points of equal elevation), but historically using a variety of methods.
Our next course is Opportunity mapping. The definition of mapping is ‘making a map or a matching process where the points of one set are matched against the points of another set’. This is a technical definition of mapping but as one might know, there is more than one type of map.
Our first assignment was to map out our house and plot the areas of conflict in the house.
I first started by plotting my house-
The next part was to plot the area of conflict. Given that I and my family members spend almost our entire day in the living room, it is the area where most of the conflicts arise- most of the time concerning the charging points. So below I have mapped out the same-
The blue lines indicate the points usually occupied by me, the green ones are occupied by my sister. I’ve indicated the charging points occupied by my dad with the help of a yellow dotted line because he keeps on charging his phone every one hour as he wants his phone to be fully charged at all times of the day. My mum never puts her phone up for charging by herself owing to which I did not assign a particular color line to her.
Above I have tried to plot down the areas of conflict in the entire house. The bathrooms and the balcony have been entirely marked as green zones. We usually sit on the balcony with our chai and have peaceful calm conversations. The entry to the bathrooms has been marked as a conflict area given that usually there are fights over who will go bathe first. one other major conflict area is the living room- usually between my parents over what to watch on the tv. My sister and I are usually preoccupied with whatever we are watching on our laptops.
The next task was to plot the annual water consumption in our house
Problem identification
we had to list down problems which we saw in our around our homes to look at the opportunities to solve them.
- internet connection
I share my wifi connection with my cousins who are my next-door neighbors. Usually, most members of both families are outdoors owing to work and education purposes but due to the current pandemic, everyone is stuck home. Being stuck at home, all of us have to rely on the wifi to complete our work commitments.
This has put too much load on the wifi connection, leading to a decreased bandwidth and a bad internet connection.
- water leakage
We have a tap in one of the bathrooms which has been leaking for quite some time now. Due to the ongoing lockdown and the covid situation we considered it unsafe to call a plumber to fix it. We tried to stop the leak by trying out various solutions but the leak is still there.
To prevent water wastage, we have been putting a bucket under the leaking tap but more often than not someone or the other will misplace the bucket leading to water wastage.
On a normal day, the leak can fill up the bucket with 3 liters of water.
- Space crunch
Just a few months before the spread of the virus we had gotten our house renovated and didn’t get the time to properly arrange all of our furniture. We had plans to buy some new furniture and get rid of some of the existing furniture but due to the pandemic, we are currently stuck with unnecessary extra furniture.
- How many books are too many books
My dad is a voracious reader and has an entire wooden cupboard just to store his books. Despite this, there are still many more books that have been stacked up in different cupboards. Apart from his book collection, There is a considerably shorter book collection that belongs to me.
Recently there was a pest problem at my house due to some very old books belonging to my dad which led to a lot of the books getting badly damaged.
I decide to take the issue of water leakage further and conduct my research on it-
