Visualization and Storytelling

Challenge & Selection:

Storytelling and Visualization is one of the most used tools now a days irrespective of the field and firm  you work in. I work in an innovation lab where we are a group of people including researchers, designers,  Engineers, product owners, data scientists and trend and technology scouts work together to deliver a  tested prototype to our customers starting from ideation to validation.

So when our internal department comes to us with a certain problem or data they have we need to  identify how to make sense of that data for example if we as a automotive company has data on insurance  claims and defects in a certain part of an auto along with the usage and mileage then this data can be  used in a number of ways. The second issue would be providing a technology scouting service where we  use a scoping mechanism in which we use visual tools like mind mapping to identify the major topic and  it’s sub topics to exactly specify the need for technology scouting for a certain department for example if  car security is looking for the most novel solution to keep track of the security sensors then this could be  a major area to scout but also the other sub topics are of much importance since it can be used for  incremental change into the major product.

This technology scouting and product development is carried out for internal and external customers.

Application:

The tools we use are design thinking and design sprint workshops using visualizations and storytelling,  brain storming, journey mapping, value chain analysis, mind mapping analysis to clear the question What  is? What if? What wow? And What works?

In this way the ideas are generated and validated from looking at the market demands, trends and  competitor analysis. As we know that the Design thinking includes 6 steps that are Understand, Define,  Diverge, Decide, prototype and Validate and for each step storytelling and visualization can be used in a  very specific manner. For example to make use of the existing data we have we utilize a User centric design  which includes Personas which is proxy for a group of actual users, and use cases which is how, when and  where a persona uses a product to accomplish a task, features for your specific persona and use case. This  can be done by using a specific persona which can be a result of market research and Interviews which  reveals a problem that a specific user tackle. Moreover, for technology scouting for internal departments  includes a coworking session with the department and then creating mind maps to level the solution  required and how it can be delivered.

Once we have all those details then we can develop these in the form of a pyramid starting from scoping  and leading to co-creation which is delivering that specific solution the middle part includes the scouting  process which uses all these visual and story telling tools in which you develop a landscape with all the  companies in it along the axis of their potential and analysis.

Insight & Approach:

The insights for these workshops and coworking session is that it drives the projects results in a very short  manners since there are iterations which brings constant improvement. Also some times it is important  to have these design thinking workshops with regular intervals since it is the best way to steer your  strategy and to always validate the question of Why related to your goals and projects. For example after  every quarter or semi annually during a workshop we identify the things we loved last year and what do  we want for next year and how it can help us to accomplish our goals and projects. Another approach we  use is OKR which is objectives and key results against them with deadlines to map out the changes and  key objectives required. Also once we have the important topics then everyone puts a weightage on them  regarding their importance and then top projects and objectives are selected and assignment in small  teams and by the end the teams works on the key results with deadlines to accomplish those objectives.  The last thing is to discuss and improve all the key results to have everyone’s point of view.

