Challenge & Selection

The main instrument I utilized was the method of Visualization, or Visual Thinking, to accomplish a mutual comprehension of an issue among a different gathering of partners before striving to recognize and characterize potential answers for the issue. Through visual thinking, we can visualise the problem which opens up all the possible challenges that we can discuss to find out the solution. In this technique, we draw a picture and write down all the possibilities in a pictorial way to make the discussion easier. This methodology has been admired and used regularly by the government offices attempting to apply innovation advancements to modernize the passage of their administrations to their client, which might be U.S. residents, organizations, and non-residents.

Application

To start the process, we create a picture of the problem domain. We draw the picture from any existing material available to understand the environment. The picture drawn is simple and made by using simple shapes & icons available on the internet. The existing material may be operational or procedural documents, training materials, marketing materials, GAO or other auditing reports. If these materials are not available, then we conduct informal interviews with some of the stakeholders or partners who serve as our main points of contact on the initiative. They give us some idea about the field picture. If appropriate to the situation, we will borrow the concept to “front-stage/back-stage” from previous research. The front-stage/back-stage approach helps to strengthen the notion that every service – even an internal service – has customers with whom the service provider interacts and internal processes that enable the organization to provide the service. The draft, that we often start with always has a column on the left to identify partners and value chain providers and a column on the right to identify oversight organizations, such as Congress, GAO, Labour unions, advocacy groups and other entities that may effect on how the organization operates.

If the front-stage/back-stage view doesn’t work, then we will create a different type of visual either based on a high-level process flow with swim lanes for different stakeholders, or another format. For this activity, we will divide the stakeholders into groups of 5-6 participants each representing a different organization or area of interest. Each group receives a soft copy or a poster size hard copy depending on where they are on the field picture so that they can write on directly, or use sticky notes or they may edit it on ground to make comments. We give them some basic questions to answer, such as: 1) What key elements are missing from the picture? 2) What would you change about the graphic to make it more accurately reflect your problem space? 3) Have you any insights or idea of your own about the picture or change it? They will have their own time to discuss the questions and give their statement the next day. Then each group will report out on their answers to those three questions

while pointing to the mark-ups on their poster. As each group reports, I need to compile them, note similarities, ignore silly ideas and record all good and bad answers. After the session, I digitize each group’s poster as an artifact, create a compilation that combines the shared and new insights from the group discussion and then produce a revised one that incorporates their feedback and proposed changes that they agreed to as a group.

Insight and approach

In any project, we need to know the inner vision of all the stakeholders and partners of that project and introspection of each one to the idea that has developed. In this view the feedback system does the appropriate job. The graphical content gives them the core idea, without any bulky content, which drives the discussion so that they are able to present their viewpoint in an organised way. Moreover, all the unexpected and hidden problem comes out in this group discussion and we can prepare ourselves accordingly. So at every point, this application is beneficial and should use it in all aspects.

