Defining the ‘Sony’ identity - Mind Mapping

Challenge

I am part of a nonprofit climbing organization, called Sony <a Quechua word meaning ‘misbehaved’.  In this case trying to symbolize the rebel and free spirit of the group>. Sony was created a year ago  by a group of mountain lovers and a group of specialized guides part of the oldest mountaineering  foundation in Ecuador. Their idea was just to get together and climb the Ecuadorian Andes. It all began  to take shape and the group has now 50 more members. A wide diversity of people from architects,  government officials, agronomists, young, old, men and women are part of it.

The challenge arises when the thought of formalizing the group and giving it a true structure is brought.  Due to the great diversity of members’ backgrounds and vocational trainings, the task seemed  impossible. There were too many ideas, all so disorganized and “floating around”, that nobody knew  even where to begin. The big idea, and mainly its execution, was starting to create chaos, more than a  real contribution to the group. The big question was how to capture everybody’s impressions, take  advantage of the group’s diversity and set a route for a possible solution or sets of solutions.

Selection

As Kenia Jj says, “mind mapping is looking for patterns and insights in a large quantity of data you  collected during your exploration of what is the current reality.” This was the main problem to be solved  at this stage. There as a vast variety of ideas and thoughts, which at this point didn´t say anything at all.  This huge amount of data needed to be somehow organized to stablish the current reality: the identity  of the group. After that its structure, formal organization, objectives and more could be defined. This  was to be done getting the members to feel involved so the best of their thoughts could be presented in  clear patterns and insights.

Application

A big challenge presented at this point was that all this happened during complete isolation, due to the  Covid-19 breakdown. An efficient mechanism was to be used in order to solve the problem with these  unique circumstances. I decided to use a direct communication channel: Ñarñaku’s WhatsApp group.

The first step was to find the right timing, and inform the group about the design challenge. Getting one  of the leaders to be the one informing the group about the objective, gave the activity acceptance,  importance and involvement. About 30 members of the group participated (which represents 60% of  the group). People were asked at first to communicate what did they feel the identity of the group was,  and what were its main goals and objectives. This led to a long group discussion that lasted almost a full  day. Most of the ideas were already known, although some very good and new insights were presented.  During this process my job was to capture all these insights and thoughts while they were presented in  an open discussion.

The tool had to be slightly modified due to the special circumstances, but the main idea of it was  preserved. Therefor the next step was to group these thoughts into clusters of ideas. A digital tool was  used to create the mind map. After the map was created it was presented to the group again to get the  members feedback. The response was more than favorable. Now the ideas were organized route was

clear in which to continue. Although the tool was not easy to implement, due to special circumstances,  the results where more than satisfactory.

Insights

One of the main insights obtained during the activity was to clearly land the group's identity. Sony is  a group of friends with a great love and passion for mountains (cluster 1), with a will for environmental  awareness (cluster 2) and social motivation (cluster 3). These ideas synthesize the identity of the group,  and lets us start thinking in possible “what ifs”. Once the ideas were clearly mapped, the conception of  the challenge, and specially its answers, suddenly became evident. It also made the members of the  group get more involved in it.

An important lesson I obtained from this activity is that when you aloud people to freely express  themselves, the ideas flow freely. A question was presented at the beginning weather to narrow down  the discussion topics, or to openly present them so people can freely talk. The second choice was  selected and what was only needed was a little guidance (someone to act as a moderator). In my  opinion the result was more effective when members felt free to express their ideas.

Approach

Next time, one thing that would definitely be different is the mechanism by which the tool was  presented. This time it was required to be an online activity. Results would have been immensely better  if the activity was taken place in person. Another aspect to be taken in account is to minimize the group  of participants. Even though the vast amount and diversity of insights presented by the group were very  helpful, sometimes it became an obstacle when trying to move forward. I think that these two aspects  contribute to making the process sometimes slow and not always helpful. It can definitely be improved.

Author: Jesus Juarez

