Reflection on Visualization

Challenge.

I’m not in the business world, I teach Microbiology at a university level. For this challenge I prefered  to  tackle  a  personal  but  popular  problem  these  days:  how  to  cope  with homeschooling and homeoffice in this so long quarantine. As so many families in the world, we have already tried several ways of daily routine organization, but with no much positive results. It seemed to me a perfect problem for which a creative solution was needed and suitable for the Design Thinking approach.

Selection.

Visualization, as stated in the recomended reading, is a “meta” tool that potentiate “right brain” thinking in the process of identifying, organizing, and communicating, thus simplifying team collaboration. It also is a spontaneous way we, my husband and I, use when we try to organize our thougths.

In spite of that Visualization can be achieved in several forms and with a variety of materials, we usually make basic scketches  on a blank paper.

Application.

As a start, we defined a new question. A broader one. Instead of focusing on homeschooling and homeoffice, we looked for healthier and happier family routines, that could enable a better organization.

We draw our family in the center of the page and sourrounded it with graphs of different tasks to be accomplished through the day, organized by categories. We realized how much time they usually take and contrast with how much we would like them to take. We also could see how different tasks and routines were related.

Insight.

After Visualization with a broader question, we could gain insight on different issues that can inadvertingly impact on our organization, even at emotional levels. For example, nutrition and fitness, as well as caring for shared rest breaks, can affect productivity. We also found tasks that could be accomplished temporarily in a different manner with less effort, to save time and energy for the now more demanding duties. Moreover, strengths and weaknesses also became apparent.

As a result we identified several change opportunities that could have been missed with a different approach or a narrower question.

Approach.

Ways and materials for Visualization depends strongly on the problem to be solve, the people  applying it, and the design proccess step. Anyway, given the success of the tool in visualizing  possible improvements, I wouldn’t make too many modifications.

On the other hand, I would apply this kind of approach very early in any proccess, instead of  after several months of quarantine...

