EXAMPLE OF MIND MAPPING

1. Challenge: Describe your challenge, including all relevant information.

Together with my team, we have embarked on a project to improve the orientation experience for young  graduates and professionals. We noticed complaints and dissatisfactions in the orientation processes and  a big wave of reorientation, barely one or two years after entering the professional life. We have  identified a pain of young professionals or students in the process of professional choices.

So, we set out to modify this process with the design thinking methodology.  One of the steps that  was most striking for us was mind mapping.

The goal for us was to identify and understand the steps that were causing student dissatisfaction  and to devise technological and human solutions (mentoring) to improve this experience.

2. Selection: In your own words, briefly describe the tool you selected (e.g., what it is

and why you selected it for your challenge -- including any appropriate video  lecture references).

Mind mapping is used to represent how ideas or other items are linked to a central idea and to  each other. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas to look for  patterns and insights that provide key design criteria. We do this by displaying the data and  asking people to cluster them in ways that allow themes and patterns to emerge. To succeed,  mind mapping must be a team sport.

After making field observations (including orientation rooms), and dozens of interviews with the  people concerned, we gathered all this information in a room to make it available to everyone  and to know what the team members thought of it.

I chose this tool because it revealed our ability to work in a group in order to define a design  criterion.

3. Application: Describe how you applied the tool you selected to your challenge

(e.g., what you did and how the tool was applied effectively or ineffectively).

We gathered all the information collected during the observations and interviews in a room. Several tools  were used to materialize the information, including journey maps and personas sheets. The idea was to  accurately report the different stages of observation to the whole team and draw relevant conclusions for  the rest of the process.

After a free session, we formed focus groups, materializing important conclusions on a wall of insights.  We then grouped the conclusions according to their conceptual proximity and thus create clusters.

We then grouped the clusters of the different groups in order to come out with a design criterion and  relevant insights.

4. Insight: Describe the insight you gained from applying the tool you selected to

your challenge (e.g., how an insight affected your thinking about the challenge  and about design thinking more broadly).

We found that school trade shows and business fairs did not seem sincere to students and young  professionals. They felt like they were participating in advertising campaigns and they did not get  useful information to make relevant choices or felt drowned out by too much information. They  were therefore looking for less interested and more pragmatic sources of information. So, we started  to focus our thinking on the possibility of finding pragmatic and less interested sources of  information.

During this stage, we fight against our confirmation biases to stay focused on the feedback of  interviewees.

5. Approach: Describe what you might do differently next time -- applying the same

tool you selected or a different one -- and the reason(s) why.

Next time, we will formalize more interview forms in order to have the feeling of all interviews on the  same questions. However, we will be given the freedom for interviewers to ask questions of opportunity  and to collect even more relevant information.

