Reflection – Visualisation

Challenge & Selection    I am faced with three challenges:

1. Building one application for three different emergency service alert procedures.  2. Working with participates that are unfamiliar with design thinking and may doubt it’s worth.  3. Locked-in requirements.

I choose the tool of Visualisation to draw out and align ideas from three different emergency  service agencies. This ensured product buy-in from all three agencies as they were a part of the  process to create it. And because they were a part of the journey from the start, they would have  an understand of why certain decision were made, and why some ideas were rejected.     To find what would work for all three agencies, I conducted a paper prototyping session.  Paper will be used to simulate the application screens.    Application    For the session I created an introduction to paper prototyping presentation, knowing many would  not have done this before. The aim of the presentation was not only to show them the process and  what we hope to achieve by the end of it, but to alleviate any fears that they may ‘not be good at it’  (“yes, there is some drawing involved, but we are not expecting a Monalisa”), or it’s not a  worthwhile exercise (“knowing what’s important to you will help us make decision later in the  process”).     I organised the room layout to ensure there was a table for each agency, with plenty of paper;  pens; and scissors. Each table had its own facilitator to help guide each agency through the process  of drawing screen elements, cutting them out and arranging them to make screens, and shifting  elements up & down based on importance.     The requirements dictated the “screens” we would create, and at the end of the session each table  would playback what they had created to the other tables.      Insight & Approach    Having a visual representation of the screen allowed each person to clearly see:

• If there was mission criteria information missing for their agency.  • If there was too much information on one screen for it to be useful.  • How best to group items, to make them more useful.

The exercise gave the participates a sense of what was to come, build engagement & excitement  for next steps (user testing the outcomes).

In the end some very exciting ideas and screens were generate, but each agency took a different  approach from the others. Though this helped each agency individually, it did not address the  alignment challenge.     The fear of tiring out the participates with a workshop that would go for too long, prevented me  from throwing the agencies together. I took on the challenge of aligning all three designs into one  myself when I should have asked the agencies. Even if no solution was found, it would demonstrate  why some of what were on their screens would not be in the final product.

