Mind Mapping Tool and Learning launch approach

Challenge

I am the Engagement and Retention Manager for an International NGO focused on children. I work  closely with the families who got sponsored by donors around the world. For them to be affiliated with  our organization, they must participate actively in our programs and be in touch with our sponsors  through different types of channels (letters, emails, videos, etc.). For the last year since the pandemic  started most of the families didn’t want to participate and write to their sponsors because of the fear of  contagion and perhaps they see these activities as obligations which is why is important to start focusing  on their needs and deploy a project to understand their motivations and how these processes can be  more fun or engaging.

Hypothesis

Sponsorship is seen as a boring process, families and children write communications because they feel  obligated, in most cases the sponsor doesn’t reply which means that the correspondence is not being  emotional and lacks sincerity ad spontaneity. The methodology to gather the correspondence is seen as  traditional because is mainly retrieved by paper.

Selection and application

Because of the need to obtain ethnographic information, identify motivations and abstract feeling, but  also to identify concerns and thoughts difficult to gather in a traditional way, we applied four types of  methodologies:

1. Through a virtual meeting with 6 participants, 2 for each of the provinces in which we work around  the country, each participant had a digital blank board so they can draw what they understand about  sponsorship, and try to express what makes them happy, sad, or concern, finally they used the Miro  platform to identify common themes and patterns that would make the process more engaging.

Example (in Spanish) of the sticky notes divided on different themes and patterns from the 6 participants:

2. The second methodology we applied was in situ in two different environments with the same number  of participants, in this case, we used interviews with tangible tools, with the aim of using objects like  pictures to be able to understand more abstract thoughts, for example, motivations to make this a more  friendly and entertaining experience. We also used a whiteboard, so they draw and express their feeling  after they chose the pictures.

3. The third one was also in situ, we accompanied the staff on the field on a one day work, we chose 10  staff from primary care, accountability, and staff who visits the families, we joined them while they  visited the families to collect the correspondence so we understood the process, what messages they  share at the moment, what materials they use, and also, to see what the family reaction is.

We show a picture of a participant writing a letter:

4. And, the last one, we prepared two anonymous online surveys to all the personnel on the field and to  20 families, the surveys included questions about the actual processes, our new, proposed process,  understanding the process and the prioritization of tasks, and feelings about the change, and was  conducted within a one-week timeframe.

Finally, we went through three workshops to structure all the information gathered. These three  sessions occurred within a three-week timeframe.

We expect to produce a document with a clear description of our new, more agile processes/workflow  to identify different types of personas, understand their motivations and feelings. The objective is to  establish criteria for the What If idea generation phase and by applying the learning launch tool, our  team would confirm our assumptions and designed launches to test these assumptions.

Insights

What I have learned from conducting this exercise with several groups and using different tools is that  while the patterns – especially the revised boards with sticky notes that incorporate their feedback and  improvements we could use – shows everything is ok and doable, is important to complement and  analyze abstracts feelings like when they used the pictures and the anonymous survey for reinforcing  our understanding of the problem we are working to solve, the more valuable aspect of the activity is

the shared insights and shared learning that occurs while they are working to define their problem  space.

Once I analyze the results, we could confirm one of our hypotheses, children find it boring writing a  letter in a paper, on a traditional way, they would love to use different tools like a tablet, a camera, they  would prefer drawing rather than writing. Families also find the process quite monotonous; they feel  pressure to reply to communications on time and in many cases do not receive a response and there is  no connection with their sponsor in most cases.

Approach

I consider that having a complex hypothesis, involves using different types of design thinking tools to go  into the wild and understand and empathize with the customer, in my case the families and children. I  started using a mind mapping tool, but I needed also to apply a learning launch approach to understand  more about the process and how we can improve results but more importantly, providing a good  experience for sponsors and children. For the next time, I would start visiting the families first, to obtain  information from the field, preparing direct interviews will provide me more insights to start or prepare  a survey or tools.

