Reflection using Mind Mapping tool

Challenge:

One of my main tasks as a computer science engineer specialized in payment system solutions is to  support bank institutions to select what payment systems are better suited for their organization,  especially what type of payment terminals such as ATMs they need to integrate, what type of card  products they need to create for their clients and what are the payment platforms they need to  integrate to their system.

The bank needs are discussed in meetings in collaboration with their representatives. The main tool that  we use is the Mind Mapping design tool.

Selection:

The mind mapping tool helps me and customers here banks know better what they really need as  payment applications, to take note and consolidate information in a clear way from different individuals  both in my team and theirs.

Application:

As mentioned the discussion of bank needs in payment solutions are held in meetings with  representatives and stakeholders of the bank. We first define what topic we will discuss, for example  what payment terminal should be integrated to their system to solve their payment problems with their  clients. To process we use a white board to draw the map. We first write the title of the project they  want to integrate ‘new payment ATM terminal’ in a circle in the center of the board then we dive  deeper to the topic by creating main branches such as: current type ATM terminal that are already in  production, locations we want to put the new type of ATM, how we will provide the atm and from  where, what are the budget etc. we use very short phrases or single words while writing the branches.  Then we rearrange and structure the map using software tools and images as atm photos and atm  brands and colors to improve memory retention for all the participants.

Insights:

This way of brainstorming using mind mapping tool really help us to understand better the needs our  custemers, to define a scope such as what brand of atm terminal will be better suited for the production  environment of the bank system and what are the main parts that need to be changed to readapt the  existing data, to generate new ideas from each one in the meeting, and finally to understand the data  the bank would provide us and extract the meaning from it. This tool helps us as well to understand the  difficulties that will occur while processing and minimize the risk of failure of the project.

Approach:

My organization and I had already gone through multiple design thinking activities, the mind mapping  has helped us restructure our ideas and understand better one another. I think what we need in our  organization to improve innovation is to apply more the learning lunch design tool in our projects to  better experience the assumptions gathered in real environments and better provide services in term of  payment system to our customers.

Tina Shields

