Design Thinking for Innovation – Reflection

Challenge

I work for UCSF (Dutch Telecom company) and the organization is in a transformation  to a more data driven organization. I guide this transformation as an advisor and  change manager. The challenge ahead of me is our customer service unit. There is a  wish to make the teamleaders of the callcenter agents more data driven. I have  interviewed 6 teamleaders as well as 3 service managers with whom they work. I now  have to discuss with my colleague Madelon, and thereafter with my stakeholder  (René), who is commited to a data driven customer service, my proposed plan for  educating these teamleaders to enhance their data analytics skills.

Selection

I selected Visualisation as my tool of choice. The reason is that I need to present my  observation (the situation as is) and communicate the wishes of the teamleaders for  their development of data analytics skills and the introduction of a more data driven  way of working. At first I started putting my observations and conclusions from the  interviews in powerpoint. However, I realized that it was a lot of information and it did  not transfer the setting, the feelings and the emotions I experienced during the  interviews and observations. As the proposed plan will be about people, the elements  mentioned are very important in my perspective. Therefore I wanted to communicate  and let my colleague Madelon feel the dimensions I have seen and the impressions I  have got. Besides that the message should be clear and simple and it would be nice  if I could put her right side of the brain on, to contribute with innovative ideas as well.  As learned during the Visualisation lecture, visualization makes it tangible and  concrete. As learned in the lecture, Visualisation is applicable throughout the design  process, but in this case I used it for the exploration and pattern finding of my  project/challenge at hand.

Application

I applied this tool by using drawing. I read through my observations and thought about  the three most important messages I wanted to get through. These I drew with a black  and green pencil.

Thereafter I started to depict the challenges the teamleaders articulated to me.

I concluded with the ‘what if’ scenario the teamleaders and I talked about.

I used these picture in a PowerPoint presentation to start the conversation with  Madelon and I told the story about ‘what is’ (my observations and conclusions from  the interview) and the ‘what if’ scenario the teamleaders and I discussed.

Insight

Although I am not a comfortable drawer, I found out how easy it is to create images  by using google as an inspiration and drawing figures with simple lines.

When I presented my drawings to Madelon I felt a positive energy from scratch. She  was surprised to see something different than just text to start exploring ideas from and  it made her excited to start the meeting. I recognized that she understood me instantly  when I started telling my story and pointing to the images. I think it was because I did  not just use words, I used them in combination with the drawings, which created a  single interpretation of my story. On the other hand, the images allowed me to make  the story short and to the point.

The best thing about the meeting was that she added her ideas and suggestions for  the proposal and started thinking visually as well. She wanted to add it as a  visualization instead of just words. We got up and used a whiteboard to start drawing.

All in all, my initial drawing I think allowed a broad understanding of the context in a  relatively short amount of time. Therefore we could go immediately into more  deepening questions and effective discussion and visualize this at the same time.

Approach

Next time I would not put it in a PowerPoint anymore. I would just put all the pictures  together on a A3 paper and take pencils with me. In this way my communication  partner can draw lines, write and make figures him-/herself. This opens up the meeting  to even more creativity.

I could have used it in the designing process earlier on. During the interviews, I could  have let the participants draw their answers, feelings and thoughts. I would do this  now as I am more comfortable with the tool. However, I think I did it right as I wanted  to experiment first in a smaller stage instead of throughout the process.

After this meeting Madelon and I decided to not create a PowerPoint presentation to  present our idea to the business stakeholder René, but use only visualization. So I  created the A3 image you see below and made copies of it. I will go in the meeting  with only this visualization and pencils and I am excited to see what will happen.

