Challenge & Selection

As a software engineer, it is of utmost importance that a problem is adequately visualized on  behalf of a client so as to produce value from a product. Oftentimes, clients do not know or  cannot fully articulate what it is they require in a solution so it is left to my team and I to take  time and break down the problem on a whiteboard, this begins the first steps toward planning  the steps toward completion or even assigning roles in the project. Such scenarios are favorable  for the design thinking approach because more information is needed and difficult to attain from  the client, the problem is difficult to define and scope, data normally isn’t readily available or is  scattered in different systems and there exists some level of uncertainty.

Application

As mentioned before, a white board and marker is the first step taken in contextualizing the  problem at hand and attempting to devise an innovative solution. First, the pain points of the  current system or software (if any) in place are examined to understand where the opportunity  exists for a built solution to fit in. These user pain points are analyzed using the design tool of  visualization, illustrations are drawn to show the obstacles a system user has to their goal, and  why those problems exist. Doing this allows us to see how the tools we have (or maybe don’t  have) at our disposal may be used to mitigate each issue, one by one.

Furthermore, it is common practice to take a day off to visit the operations of the client in order  to gain a better appreciation of how things run on a day to day basis. Stakeholders from  different levels of the company are interviewed to get as many ideas on board as possible to on  what features they would like to have on the product that would make their job easier. This  stage can often result in getting feedback that may seem out of scope or unrealistic, but every  opinion is taken aboard regardless because the goal is to iteratively develop towards the best  possible system.

Insight & Approach

In following this approach, the team ensures that the drive and thinking is human centered,  since it is humans’ problems that we are looking to solve. Visualizing he problem from the  viewpoint of the eventual user or customer helps eliminate personal biases and preferences that  may be introduced into the project at the planning stages.

The approach also looks to untapped opportunities and possibilities, for example one situation  involved solving a college’s problems registering students during the COVID 19 pandemic by  using a Facebook powered autonomous conversational agent (cahtbot). The programmed agent  simply checked if the student fulfilled all academic requirements and paid their fees, then  proceeded to register them for the next semester. Such a solution isn’t very common where it  was implemented.

