Assignment Design Thinking : Visualization

Challenge

I was hired as a consultant for a small organization that specialized in garment finishing in Sri Lanka, to  help turnaround the business from repeated periods of loss making. The organization was constantly  delaying deliveries to customers and facing large penalties for the delays. Customers were threating to  withdraw orders and gaining new customers was challenging. To understand the cause for such issues or  the “What is” stage of the process, involved working with and interviewing personnel involved in  different departments and analyzing information. The information gathered were mostly description  from employees of how they perceived the process flow and it tended to differ from one person to  another. One of the main issues identified was the inability of the organization to track orders that were  work in progress and the solution involved developing and implementing a system where all records are  maintained online with different departments updating information. The challenge here was to convince  the employees to accept such a system which would involve them moving away from maintaining  manual records that they have relied upon over the last decade to manage their operations.

Selection

Visualization is considered the “mother of all design tools” (Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011) as it can be used  anywhere in the design thinking process from what is to what works. Making presentations more visual  for e.g. using images, charts, maps, photographs etc., helps better communication, understanding and  reduces ambiguity. It helps ensures everyone is on the same page and promotes us to think visually or  rather access the right side of our brains. Most importantly visualization helps gain commitment and  commitment to change was very important for the project to succeed (Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011).

I have used process maps, photographs, sample screen shots, and a prototype in part to help the  management and the team members visualize the problem, understand the current situation, promote  thinking and discussions, generate ideas for improvement and gain the necessary support for proposed  solutions.

Application

To understand how the process worked and to identify any non-value adding activities involved mapping  the processes in to flow charts. Each one of the team members who were representatives from different  departments, were then presented with flow charts to identify and highlight areas they believed were  non value adding and suggest improvements. Presenting pictures of workbooks that were maintained by  different departments helped show and communicate to the employees the amount of data recorded  and maintained across departments. As part of the solution, I worked with a developer to produce  sample screens of the proposed system and a small working prototype that helped illustrate to the team  some of the key features such as the user friendly interface, the ability to track orders and generate  reports with a click of a button etc.

It was important that the employees accepted the need for the system to ensure that they worked with  the team in system development and then used the system once implemented and not reverted back to

manual records. The process charts helped them see the amount of activities duplicated and proving  them a visual glimpse of how the system will be and demonstrating with an example on the how the  system would help simply their tasks, helped us gain the support we needed.  We were able to convince  the top management to the departmental employees who would be using the system, and accordingly  received the necessary financial support and the employee commitment to support system  development and adaption.

Insight & Approach

Instilling change in behavior is not an easy task. Especially when you are faced with a set of long term  employees who have become comfortable in their way of working. It would have been extremely  difficult or rather impossible to convince and gain their support only by describing the situation and  proposed solutions. Helping the team visualize the problem and the proposed solutions sparked an  interest among tired workers. Our presentations were better understood and it promoted many  discussions among the stakeholders. Suggestions for improvement were more relevant and we were  able to even witness better collaboration among departments.

Visualization as a tool was widely used and was very helpful throughout the project. However, I believe  the use of the story telling together with visualization would have helped us better connect with the  employees as they would have been able to relate to the situation. Sharing stories from experiences for  e.g. from other similar organization, customer experiences etc. could have helped motivate employees  to be more involved in the project.

References

Muhammad Bello & Paul Johnston (2011) Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers. New York:  Columbia University Press.

