Reflection - Visualization Tool    Challenge    My question is : How do we spur rapid growth for a new line of digital products for organizations?    I work for a Montreal digital agency with 52 employees.  I was recently appointed to create a sales  presentation regardinga new product line we have developed. I wanted the sales representatives to  align their outlooks, to find how we should present these new products to potential customers and more  importantly, I wanted us as a team, to understand why and whenthese potential customers really need  these products.    Selection    I decided to use the Visualization Tool to create a diagram of our customers’ journey and build  personas before building the content and the tools our digital experts will be using to sell and promote  our solutions.  I chose this approach to better understand our users’ needs who are CMO’s, Marketing  directors and Brand managers and to build personas, identify patterns and find new innovative ways of  pitching to them.    Application    I started the process by designing a simple representation of our product line on a wall in the  conference room and designing a straw man on the opposite wall to represent a potential customer.  For the activity, I had installed easyflip sheets everywhere in the conference room so every stakeholder  could write directly on the walls.    Easyflip sheets

I divided the stakeholders into 2 groups of 2-3 participants each working on a wall to add symbols,  colors, diagrams and drawings to represent How they viewed our product line and our potential  customers.  I gave them a 60 minute period to discuss amongst themselves and to design what they  wanted on their respective walls.  Following this, I gave them 3 tasks to perform :

1. Pitch your work to the other group ;

2. Ask them what is missing to make their graphic representations more accurate ;

3. Find some patterns and synthesize them.

Insight  What I have learned from conducting this exercise is that while the graphic representation of the  customers’ journey and the personas we have developed correctly represented the actual state and the  desired state, the more valuable aspect of the activity was the full involvment of everyone in the room. It  created a comfortable environment where every stakeholder openly shared and was challenged to find  creative ideas. They quickly identified what is important for our customers in their relationship with the  agency overall and they were able to start using new ways of interacting withour actual customers right  away.    Approach    Since I discovered that the level of involvement and participation is much better  while using this  Vizualisation Tool, I would repeat this exercise as a starting point for asking the four Design Thinking  process questions with our development team as well as with our clients to better represent what we  want to achieve together and what the current and desired state of a projet or a process is

