Design Tool – Visualization

Challenge and Selection

The main challenges we faced with the implementation of our online purchase and delivery system of  products to some areas in our country were the educating the relevant stakeholders (necessary staff  etc) about this new service and efficiency in the delivery of the product.

My selection of a design tool was Visualization.

Visualization is about visual thinking and using images. It pushes us beyond using words or language  alone. If you present your idea by drawing a picture of it, you reduce the possibility of unmatched  mental models. A simple sketch can tell more about an idea in a few minutes Adding elements to  drawings or simply discussing the sketches helps to build on each other’s ideas drawing of images can  benefit our understanding of how the idea unfolds through different stages of the service provided  particularly when generating new ideas

Application

We recently introduced Online Shopping from our website as part of our modernization of the company.  So we used this Visualization tool to inform, get ideas and input from team members and other  stakeholders and try to test the system and procedure a customer goes through from time of purchasing  items in cart to the time of delivery of the products.

We used a dry erase white board to draw stick figures, simple images and labels to create a basic  diagram with the steps in this process. Each step also gives a few points on the team members involved  and the average time he/she would take.

This outlined in very simple terms with the aid of the pictures the system we came up with and was easy  to engage all stakeholders since they are from various backgrounds.

Insights

A lot of insight was gained after this process. For example, the timing for each stage in our  provision of the service was updated. Insight was also achieved from the number of  stakeholders involved through external companies and back up plans were put in place for pop  up challenges.

Approach

This design tool helped us in putting out and sharing ideas for this service, however during the  second phase we would try to incorporate some other tools like storytelling so that  stakeholders/customers can be more emotionally connected to the service.

