Norma Rosas

Team Mind Mapping

Challenge: Team Collaboration, Creativity & User Experience

I manage a team of content developers and instructional designers for Clarity-Innovations. As part of  an organization that works with clients, from fortune 1,000 to non-profit organizations, we develop  educational material to support educators in integrating effective use of emerging technologies ─ to  transform teaching and learning to 21st century learning experiences. A lofty goal! We work with  several clients on different projects concurrently. Most of the projects are from soup to nuts ─ from  ideation to production in collaboration with a team of engineers and graphic designers.

My team generally uses the same process for all of our projects: internal and client kick-off meetings,  outlining, drafting, reviewing, and publishing. We have weekly project syncs or as needed. However,  much of the initial brainstorming is done siloed. Once the writers get the assignment, it’s up to them  to come up with the content outline. While, we meet regularly to discuss status and roadblocks, we  don’t often take the time to work on content together, especially in the early stages. Based on  feedback from my team, they wanted to see more collaboration in the initial phases of a project to  help them to understand who they were designing for and what they are designing.

Selection: Mind Mapping

Since so much of my team’s work focuses on writing, mind mapping helps us to think visually, share  our thinking in an informal low-risk manner, move away from our comfort zone, collaboratively  expand our ideas, and get into the minds of our end users.

For my project, I decided to do something similar to the “yard sale” example in one of the week 3  videos. Using this model would help to pinpoint what our users wanted out of an online interactive  professional development experience for a STEM classroom product (magnetic circuit blocks). This  would be a creative and collaborative experience for the team.

Application: Our Process

Our task was to design an online interactive, three to five hour professional development course for  elementary school teachers that could be delivered face-to-face, online, or blended. Ultimately, the  client planned to bundle the course with their product sales. Here’s what we did to better understand  what is ​ :

Step 1: The User Experience: Observations

I invited several classroom teachers to our office one day after school for a couple of hours. Free  food helped to draw them there. Some of the teachers had used the product that we were tasked  with creating professional development for; while others had never seen or heard of the product.

During the two hours, my team observed the users. They jotted down notes, recorded conversations,  snapped photos and video, and asked questions.

The participants were given certain specific structured tasks with the circuit blocks as well as free  exploration time. Each participant recorded notes in a small journal related to: what they liked, didn’t  like, found frustrating or challenging, how they might use the blocks in a classroom, and what  specific classroom ideas they had, etc. The participants also engaged in short one-on-one interviews  with members of my team.

Everything was collected at the end of the session.

Step 2: The Gallery Walk: Data collection

The following day, I scheduled a work session with my team. I brought in everything that we had  collected from the participants: the journals, notes, photos, recordings, etc. Some of the items were  posted around the room, some sat on tables, and some was displayed on computer screens. Each  team member had a stack of colored post-it notes and some colored markers. When walking around  the “gallery”, they were told to note ideas (for what fits and what doesn’t fit) that would give us insight  into the potential workshop users and inform our product development. They could draw pictures,  write words, pull quotes, or use any other techniques to bring their ideas back to the group. They did  this without talking.

Step 3: Sharing: Idea generation

After the gallery walk, team members were grouped. As they shared their notes, they identified  themes and clustered their post-its according to each of the themes on chart paper. This continued  until all the sticky notes were posted. If they had post-its that didn’t quite fit, they put those on the  outer edges of the paper. During this process, there was a lot of discussion and excitement.

Step 4: Data analysis: Identifying patterns and insights

Now, looking at the graphic organizers they created, they needed to identify about 10 insights. What  did the observations, notes, and post-its reveal? These needed to be written in statements. Each  team identified eight to ten and shared these. We created a master list of the statements, combining  or removing statements that were similar. This we would use to guide our development. The list  included statements, such as:

● Users want to see classroom examples of how to use these.

● The teacher’s ability to focus on one building task is on average 10 minutes, then they get  frustrated. Therefore, the hands-on parts of the workshop need to be delivered in no more  than 10-minute chunks.

● Management is often a challenge. Teachers want to know how to manage the blocks in a  classroom with thirty students.

Step 5: What is to What if: Criteria

The insights served as our criteria for the workshop development, leading us to the ​what if ​  stage of

the product design.

Insight: What I learned

Although I was reluctant at first to take my team’s time to do this, in the end, the experience was  beneficial for all. As we design the workshop, we now have criteria to guide us and to measure our  success. My team feels empowered to forge ahead with the project because they have a better  understanding of the end user’s needs and expectations.

The team embraced the opportunity to collaborate and be creative. This was clear in the fun that  they were having and feedback at the end. As a result of this experience, I realize how important it is  to dig into the ​what is ​ , the empathy stage of design thinking, to deliver a product that meets a real

need for real customers.

Approach: Next time I would...

Next time I do this, I’m going to use more digital tools as all of the paper got a little out of hand. I  think we could make a digital collage of the users’ experiences, ask them to take notes in a  collaborative document, and use tools such as Padlet instead of post-its.

