Assignment Design Thinking for Innovation | Reflection Visualization Tool

Challenge     ROC A12 is a regional training center in the Dutch province of Gelderland. It offers   secondary vocational education to students who are generally between the ages of 16 and 21. It  is a traditional organisation a many ways, a trait you see reflected in their marketing activities.  For example, looking at the set up for their current campaigns, it mostly comes down to a  mixture of insights from old research, old habits and a percentual division of budgets between  owned and paid media. In a recent evaluation it became apparent that the campaigns are an  important reason for a drop in student enrollment rates.     Last year I was asked to help the marketing team design a new campaign for recruiting  students. There was one catch: though we were talking about very different target audiences  within the student population (ROC A12 offers studies varying from auto mechanic to  beautician) the ​budget and management would not allow for us to design multiple campaigns.     Selection    I started of with the formation of a project team consisting of an IT colleague, a back office  colleague, teachers, an online marketeer, a corporate communications advisor and a  design/traffic specialist. These colleagues were owners of either crucial information or products  needed for coming to an effective and achievable new student recruitment campaign.     During our first meeting it became apparent that teamwork wasn’t going to be easy. On the one  hand it was hard for the team members to talk to each other because of their various  backgrounds, and on the other hand the discussion was drenched with assumptions about  student preferences and behaviours. Also, we needed to collect a lot of information and insights  in order to help us solve our problem.     Therefore I suggested that we would start by researching our hypothesis and visualize our  findings in a way to facilitate a clear overview and joint understanding of the topics discussed.     Application    Besides using visualisation for processing the output of our research, we also made sure we got  visual input. We divided the team in 3 groups. Two groups went around the school and asked  students if they would participate in our research. 30 students (following all sorts of programs)  told us they would. We divided them into 2 groups of 15 students. The first group was asked to  bring us a collage with examples of at least 4 marketing campaigns that they are attracted to  and explain to us why and what they would think if we copied the concept for a campaign for our  school. The second group was asked to make and present a mindmap with all elements, and

people that were of influence for their choice for ROC A12, and rate these elements according  to level of influence on their final decision. The third part of our project group spend an  afternoon in the library, checking books and websites for missing/relevant information and  insights that would help us accomplish our task.     During our next meeting the groups presented their findings. Thereafter we drew a student on a  whiteboard who was surrounded by thinking clouds. This became our persona. A student who  was trying to figure out what he was going to do with his future, and looking at the option of  studying. The rest of the day we clustered our findings and looked for patterns in the obtained  data, consisting of the collages, mindmaps and desk research. Clusters of data were for  example visual attractiveness, main influencers, possible touchpoints (media usage), and  events that would bring a student into contact with secondary vocational education and/or WIU Libraries.     After a thorough discussion of the resulting visual with the persona, we made small changes,  and selected the most important elements for the design of the campaign. When finalized we  took photos and made sure that they were placed on the walls of our meeting rooms.    Insight & Approach    When we were done organizing we looked back on some very productive conversations, and  had a great visual overview of our results. That was of great help when we started to create  different scenarios and making choices about the new student recruitment campaign.    By applying visualization as a design tool the project team was effectively working together.  They were able to ping pong ideas faster, and make the best use of the associative power of the  group. The project members understood each other, and were able to make quick connections  from one topic to another. Because of the visual input students brought us we were able to  “keep them close” during the entire process, which resulted in a successful campaign.    One thing I would do different next time is to also invite other stakeholders like the rest of the  marketing team and the management team for in between presentations. Because the project  team was operating fairly isolated we had a hard time convincing the other stakeholders of our  ideas for the new student recruitment campaign.     Another learning I have is that visualization doesn’t come naturally for everyone. Some of the  participating students were a little bit hesitant to work visually, because they felt they lacked the  experience and skills. However, after explaining it wasn’t about drawing, they happily applied  visualization for the input they produced.

