Reflection - Visualization

Challenge

Utilizing the Visualization tool has been a crucial part in my job that I started 6 months ago. I work as a  business intelligence analyst for a software company, and I had been brought in to tackle the challenge  of data integrity issues and inconsistencies which had led to lack of trust in the numbers being reported  as well as updating the current dashboards’ look and feel. The original scope of the issue was that the  main stakeholders in a 300-person consulting wing of our company were consistently seeing numbers  that didn’t match up with either the source system or what they were expecting to see based on their  own calculations. This led to a complete distrust in the dashboards they used daily, as well as any  numbers that were being shared with either high-level executives within the consulting organization or  even down to consultants’ individual metrics. To compound this issue, many people had expressed that  they had not felt heard when it came to their feelings on the issues they were having.

Selection

The selection of starting at the Visualization step was simple. Having just started at this company, it  wouldn’t be enough to only go through and fix what we thought were issues within the system until we  really understood what the stakeholder’s pain points were and to make sure we were listening. We  wanted to approach the issue using the Visualization tool to not only get the stakeholders thinking  about what was possible, but also to understand what their true pain points were.

Application

The process first started with user interviews. This was conducted in several different steps in order to  gain full view of the issues that were being experienced. We sat down with a small number of users from  different levels within the organization and ask them to use the current dashboards in the way they use  them every day. We wanted to watch what their normal progression was through them, and how they  accessed the data. To our surprise, we found that because of the data issues we were observing users  not only have to sift through rows of unneeded data, but they were also having to go to multiple  dashboards to validate their numbers as well as get the full picture of their portfolio. On-top of this, we  found that there was a general lack of knowledge with how the numbers were calculated that stemmed  from the complete absence of transparency in the data.

Because we realized that just correcting the data issues updating the looks of the dashboards wouldn’t  solve the overall problems of the end users, we decided to open our scope up more and start to lean  into the “What If”. We set up smaller groups of users with similar functions, making sure to only have  between 3-5 people in each group. The main question we wanted to find an answer to was: “If we  disregard what we have currently and anything was possible, what are the key must-haves for you for  reporting?”.

As we continued through the whiteboarding process and we asked for people to draw out their ideal  designs, we started to see common themes popping up consistently through all groups. Not only is data  accuracy and transparency important, but there was also a desperate need for conciseness in the way

the data is being delivered. It had been expressed over and over that there was an overwhelming  amount of data being presented to all levels and groups of people, even though they wanted less.  Throughout all sessions we kept pictures of all the different designs, as well as notes on their thought  process throughout, so that way we could combine everyone’s visualization of the perfect dashboard in  our final proposal to leadership.

Insight

The insight gained from the Visualization was that our overall scope was too narrow and solving the one  perceived problem would not solve the overarching pain points of the end users. We learned that we  need to adjust what we thought was important to our end users and start down the rest of the Design  Thinking path, in order to deliver a compelling and usable reporting system for all levels within the  organization.

Approach

Given what we have found from our utilization of the Visualization tool, we might start with a much  broader scope at the beginning of the Design Thinking process. This would help alleviate the risk we run  of missing much larger issues at hand due to only trying to solve the challenge in front of us. Also, the  more we can open discussions to a much broader approach, the more innovative and unique ideas we  end up with.

