Visualization

Challenge & Selection

I was part of an iOT project for a ship building company, which need connected vessel  monitoring system to track the current operational condition and performance of a ship.  The challenge was not only to simplify the existing manual process  but also to visualise the  multiple widgets which using data from more than 2000 sensors. Visualising the new system  for live vassal dashboard, fleet dashboard etc which is understandable to the all type of  users was a biggest challenge where mere documentation or verbal communications where  not enough.  I had used the technique of mind mapping, sticky note exercise to learn the  process and defining the scope of the project.

Application

I have conducted co-discovery session for mapping the stakeholders. This exercise helped  me to figure out the various categories of stakeholders such as Internal, External and Project  Teams. We had a good round of requirement gathering session with stakeholders to  understand the scope of the project. In this project, client has a thorough understanding of  what they really want but conceptualizing their assumptions were a difficult task for us. So,  we conducted stakeholder’s interview and affinity mapping which helped us to get a good  understanding on what they want.

The stakeholders already had the high level user stories which helped us to create an  information architecture and user flow diagram. Then I created user persona of users before  starting the design.

I decided to visualise my idea in the form of paper sketch and wireframes that helped me to  validate the idea with clients as well as end users and iterated based on the review  feedback.

I have used adobe XD as a tool to quickly and easily visualize the wireframes and convert to  a clickable prototype for doing a usability test.

Insights

After conducting the session with different stakeholders I could came to knew that people  need something visually presented to start giving feedback.  From this I learned the  importance of visualising the idea is a strong tool of communication. Visualisation helped to  bring to identify and rectify the problems in the early stage and visualisation tool helped me  for the rapid iteration.

Approach

Since I understood the effectiveness of visualisation in communicating an idea from your  mind, next time I would use the visualisation activities as a starting step of design thinking

process. It may be in the form of paper sketching, low fidelity wireframe or reference to an  application, inspirations for design etc. That will definitely help to comes out with innovative  products.

