VISUALIZATION- A reflection

Challenge:

I am currently interning with a global payments solution provider in a South Asian country. We work in  global teams, and even as an intern, we have the opportunity to interact with teams from the US and  Europe, as a part of cross-functional team interaction. Recently, I was given a problem of providing  comprehension-solutions to navigate a performance appraisal dashboard. As in, the dashboards were  catering to senior level managers, who can use the document to identify the performance and relative  occupancy of their team members and accordingly allocate work etc. The dashboards were quite tough  to navigate and it was impossible to do it without assistance. As a result, despite being powerful tools  for performance measurement, they were not being used in real terms. I was roped in to provide means  of simplifying the method of using this dashboard.

Selection:

Herein, I was asked to singlehandedly work on this project. I came across the Design Thinking sessions  and realized this problem fell in the category of non-linear problems and that neither the organization,  nor I had any experience in this kind of a project, although I had an understanding of dealing with similar  uncertainties at previous organizations and in academia. I thought it apt to select this problem and apply  the concept of design thinking to it

Application:

I realized the first step to solving this problem was analyzing the need-gap. I managed to interact with  the potential users of his document and tried to ask them open ended questions with respect to how  they would use this information, what problems they face and how things would get simpler. Albeit I  received responses right from how the entire dashboard should be revamped (which was not a possible  solution) to how someone should keep informing them the navigation methods, probably just as they  travel. I appended all suggestions and started putting it up in a visual format. I rated all options, put it in  order of the parameters like, speed, ease in adoption, etc. and tried to match them with respect to the  different dashboards and feasibility. I could then clearly come up with some 3 options like:  creating a  navigation manual, creating a video and putting add-ons in the dashboard. Now, after coming up with  these idea generation process, I would work on the other steps of design thinking to provide the  solution.

Insight:

Having used the design thinking approach for the first time, I was quite impressed with what kind of  results turned up. I could be as empathetic as I could while trying to figure out options, and the entire  idea generation and visual process created structure among chaos.

Approach:

To me, the most important aspect while trying to choose a solution would be to thoroughly analyse  what was the expectancy among the target users. The managers who would be using this project were  short of time and needed the most appropriate solution. Hence, the method of visually recreating the  entire process was crucial. However, successful implementation of the idea formed an even more

important aspect, and consequently I would be building upon these ideas and finally make a learning  launch to check feasibility and come up with that one solution

