Challenge and Selection  I am one of the management team of my organisation, where we were assigned to prepare a report,  identifying the reasons why there was a sudden drop in the student enrolment and recommending  ways to improve the enrolment. After lengthy deliberation of the design thinking tools, our team has  decided to use mindmapping to explore the current reality as it is a tool that could help us to look for  patterns and provide an in-depth insight in a large volume of data pertaining to the problem. Besides,  this tool is more intuitive and engaging in capturing the minds of all the team members to develop a  common mind among us regarding the current reality of a design challenge.    Application  To set out the mind mapping process, all team members have to collect information from various  sources, for instance, the quantitative data such as student enrolment for each intake, passing rate of  each course over the years, graduation rate of each programme in each cohort, tuition fees charged  on each programme and of other tertiary institutions as well as some ethnographic interview results  from different stakeholders such as the marketing team, administrative staff, lecturers, students,  alumni and employers. All the management team was divided into groups and was given a bunch of  medium-sized sticky notes, a clipboard and a bold marker. We were asked to note on separate sticky  note any information that we have gathered and throughout the process, all of us were reminded of  our design challenge.  Before the sharing session commenced, each member was given about 10  minutes to review our own sticky notes and group them into themed clusters (eg. curriculum) on the  clipboard. Then the sharing would commence by getting one member of the team to start by  presenting his or her sticky notes related to that theme, displaying them on a large white board. Then  another team member would add their sticky notes that are related to the same theme. The next team  would do the same. Then a second team member would suggest another theme, and so forth, until  all the sticky notes were on the board. Even the outliers (i.e. those that were not related to any theme)  would need to be pasted around the edges. Subsequently, we were required to identify the insights  that each cluster revealed, for instance, poor teaching pedagogies, leading to a low graduation rate  had discouraged potential students from enrolling into the programme. The insight statement would  be written on large sticky notes and placed them on top of the appropriate sticky note clusters. The  members were required to note the connections between and among the clusters for a better  representation of what is. From here, meaningful design criteria statement would then be generated.  These formed the conditions that our design solution must satisfy in order to solve the design  challenge. With these, our team could move on to the “what if” stage where we would focus on all  the possibilities.    Insight and Approach    Through this exercise, it had changed my approach when confronting with a problem. I would no  longer force my brain into coming up with a solution as it really stressed up myself, ended with  sleepless nights and yet the insight of a problem was still unknown and the solution was not effective.  Instead, I would continue to use mindmapping as Mind Map gives me the control over all the  information relating to the problem that I have gathered, in a systematic and organised framework,  showing me the big picture as well as the patterns of how each element/stakeholder involved are  inter-connected. This allows me to address the problem in a more comprehensive and integrated  manner.  I truly believe that mindmapping is one of the most powerful tools in the design thinker’s  toolbox as it helps in putting every piece of information into one single picture, exploring of what is  the current reality and telling a complete story of a problem before transitioning into the what if stage.

