Design Thinking for Innovation – Reflection

Challenge & Selection

I’m working as a UX designer of mobile applications, and I use Visualization as a working tool all the  time. My role is to design the screens of mobile applications, and visualization is really effective tool  which can persuade my colleagues(mostly software engineers). In a verbal way, I can’t explain my  design to my colleagues because every person has their own way of thinking. But when I show my  design with storyboards or prototypes, they can easily understand my design.

Application

First of all, I use visualization when I conduct research. For example, I use photography when I try to  understand our users. Photography helps the research process by giving us the context in which the  users live. After research process, the concepts are created as a result of research. I also use  visualization in the process of creating concepts. I make moodboards with images, photos, and pictures,  and extract the concepts.

When the concepts are created, I usually use computer programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and  Sketch to design the screen layouts and the interface components. I also visualize the information  architecture, use flows, and storyboards. With those things, I can discuss with my colleagues effectively.

Insight

I always use the visualization to solve my problems at my work, and I realized that visualization is  really effective tool to communicate with other people. By applying the visualization tool, our team can  understand my design process and products much more quickly and thoroughly. Actually, I didn’t know  that there is a theory about visualization as a problem solving tool, but after taking this class, I was  surprised that I was always using visualization at my work.

Approach

Visualization is very common tool among designers, but I think that it would really helpful for strategists  or software engineers. If they use visualization as a working tool, they could explain their thinking much  more effectively and I would apply their thinking on our application design. The word ‘design’ can be  misleading and misunderstood because we use the word as a meaning of ‘making things pretty or  beautiful’, but actually the real meaning of the word ‘design’ is to ‘make things better with logical thinking  process’. So, I would recommend my colleagues to use design thinking methods when solve problems  of their work and in their daily lives, especially to use the visualization tool.

