Challenge:

I am working at a company as an industrial designer. In our company, we are an interdisciplinary team, which means that we have colleagues who are experts in different fields such as visual communication design, architecture, interior design and fashion design. The challenge our company was dealing with was designing a play area for children in the Hematology and Oncology department of a hospital. We started to work on this project as a team but we needed to learn about the needs and expectations of the people who will be affected by the outcome of our design process. For this reason, we wanted to gather together with the inpatient children who will use this play area as the experts in being children. We also planned to include the doctors, nurses and children’s caregivers in this design process as they are the other stakeholders in this wicked problem. However, it was challenging for us because of the sensitivity of the context and children’s lack of language skills in expressing their needs.

Selection:

Thus, we selected visualization as a tool in this design process. Since visualization allows people to think in a non-verbal way and think visually, we thought that it would be especially useful for children to express their needs in this sensitive context. We also thought that visualization could be a suitable tool for us because with the help of this tool we can make sure if the users understood us properly and if we were on the same page.

Application:

We started with preparing a toolkit that consists of blank papers, pens and images and photos of the play area that show how it is right now and how it could be or what could be added. We explained the aim of the toolkit to our non-designer stakeholders. We said that we prepared these visuals to help them think visually and use the images as inspiration sources but not limit themselves with them. We made it clear that they were free to use the pens to draw something on the blank papers as well. When we started the design session, we saw that children were using the images, pens and papers in combination in a very effective way. Some of them even used their pens to complete the product on the photos and create something new. For instance, there was a chair in one of the images and one of the children used their pen to cover the top of this chair with a tent-like structure and explained that he would like to have more privacy in this play area.

Insight:

In my opinion, the visualization tool was very beneficial in gaining insights into children’s needs. Without using this tool, we might have had difficulties in understanding children and the other stakeholders, who are their doctors, nurses and caregivers in this design process. It was also beneficial to gather all the stakeholders togethers and compare and contrast the points mentioned by them. Moreover, we saw that since it was different from a regular interview session with questions and answers, the participants did not get bored during the process and we have collected a lot of data from them to design this play area in a way that meets their needs. Thus, as an interdisciplinary design team we saw that it is essential to include the users in the Design Thinking process. Even though we were experts in our fields, we were not experts in being children or doctors. Thus, the visualization tool helped us a lot in empathizing with them and finding design solutions that will meet the needs of our users.

Approach:

We did not see any drawbacks of using the visualization tool in this design process. Sometimes collecting data from users can be challenging but visualization was kind of fun for our stakeholders since it was not a conventional method and it inspired them to share their memories and wishes.

