Reflection - Mind Mapping

Challenge

I am a volunteer in a social project that carries out cultural and social activities with

almost 100 children and teenagers in situations of social vulnerability. We,

volunteers, noticed a gap in the feeding of children and teenagers, since it was based

on unhealthy foods and with a small presence of nutrients, vegetables and fruits.

Although the project takes place once a week, we provide two meals during the

activity period. We knew that changes were needed and we wanted to do that.

Selection

I have a story about using mind mapping, which is a intuitive, creative, visual and

engaging tool. Through mind mapping, it's possible to extract meaning from a large

quantity of data that was collected during the exploration in a way that lets patterns

and insights emerge. The goal is to establish criteria for the next phase. At the end,

the team will have agreement about how to decide if a solution is good. It's important

to highlight that I won't have a solution in mind and that I'll focus on possibilities.

I selected mind mapping for my challenge because I'd like to align the organization

around the gap in the feeding of children and teenagers. That way, we could better

organize all of the ideas.

Application

First, it was decided to change the feeding of children and teenagers to a more

nutritious one. Then, some other volunteers were invited to attend the project. I

presented them the situation, letting them think through at their own pace. In teams,

the volunteers discussed what sparked interest in them and the possibilities that

they've thought. So, together, similar ideas were grouped. Then the team identified

insight to get translate it into design criteria.

Insight

It was pointed out that the project's volunteers are examples for children and

teenagers. So, first we need to give good examples of healthy eating habits. This

insight totally affected my point of view about the challenge.

Thus, a partnership was made with a student of nutrition who first made an

assessment of the volunteers. Then, the professional guided us on how to have a

healthier diet and accompanied us for a while. After, it was the children and

teenagers' turn to have this nutritional assessment, guidance and monitoring.

So, I could see how design thinking can help a problem in a broader way, leading to

several possibilities.

Approach

As you can see, the participation of volunteers in the use of the design thinking tool

was essential to obtain incredible possibilities and certainly the mind mapping was a

great  tool for the feeding of children and teenagers' problem.

Although the mind mapping helped a lot, I understood that the most important point is

shared insights and learnings. The next time, I will choose to start using the

visualization tool when applying design thinking to some scenario. Then, it will be

possible to use the tool continuously, serving as a reference in solving the whole

problem.

