CHALLEGE  Current project phase: “What Is?”    Core challenge:  My team is designing a B2B digital-only sales experience that replaces sales team  interaction with digital touch points. Our CMO is anxious to get things moving quickly, so  we are getting things rolling before our ethnography begins. So far, we’ve gathered  mountains of analytics and segmentation analysis. We also have some market research  and survey data to leverage. Our challenge is twofold:

1. Craft clarity out of our research  2. Define design criteria and brainstorming prompts

Additional headwinds:  Most of the group has a fixed mindset, so there could be some resistance to trying a  new approach. In addition, we have a new CMO who is shaking things up, so there is a  lot anxiety and fear of failure in our org at the moment.    SELECTION  I’m choosing the Mind Mapping tool for my team’s challenge. Mind Mapping is a method  that helps people comb through a large amount of information and tease out the  actionable insights that will inform our design. I selected this tool because it is well  suited to help our team craft clarity out of research and define the design criteria that will  frame our brainstorming session. More information about the Mind Mapping tool can be  found in Week 3’s final video, “Mind Mapping Tool”.     APPLICATION   I scheduled a 2-hour workshop for my core team and additional stakeholders for our  Mind Mapping session. I will print out poster-sized versions of the research we’ve  gathered thus far and post them on the conference room walls. This will include:

• Segmentation data & analytics  • Insights from previously conducted focus groups and usability tests  • Market research analysis  • Competitive/comparative landscape analysis  • Survey results

In an effort to fold in more humanized insights, I will also include information taken from  behavioral science. This information will include behavioral economics concepts and  Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Influence.    Once the insights gallery is assembled, participants will have 15 minutes to browse and  make note of insights that could inform our solution. Insights should include any

inferences they have made during the gallery tour. They will also be asked to organize  their individual insights by theme.      After the individual reflection is complete, participants will start sharing their insights on  a large wall covered with butcher-block paper. One person will get things rolling with a  theme and others will contribute until one theme is tapped out. We will move on to  another theme until all insights are shared, including the outliers.     When initial sharing has wrapped up, we will begin to draw connections between the  insights and distill actionable insight statements from the clusters. These insights  statements will help us pivot from synthesis to ideation prep.     We’ll use the insight statements to define design criteria, which we will write out on a  large flipchart. In addition to the insight statements, we will also discuss where we want  to be on the spectrum of incremental change and innovation. My hypothesis is that this  first pass at brainstorming (pre-immersion) will slant towards incremental change (70- 30) since we haven’t uncovered latent customer needs yet. When we repeat this  process post-immersion, I expect that ratio to flip. In order to facilitate that discussion, I  will use the Visualization tool and ask people to place a dot sticker on the following  diagram to indicate where they think our solutions should fall on that spectrum.

Once we have defined the design criteria and aligned on the scale of change our  solutions should achieve, we will create some “How might we…” questions to serve as  prompts for an upcoming brainstorming session.        INSIGHT  “This is the only meeting I’ve ever enjoyed at 3pm on a Friday.”

– Project Sponsor, VP of Digital Marketing

“Everyone keeps looking into the room wishing they were in our meeting!”

– Director of Market Research

This workshop was very successful! During our 2-hour session, the team stayed fully  engaged and managed to craft 12 poignant, actionable insight statements that will help  us pivot into brainstorming next week. We also aligned on brainstorming solutions that  covered both ends of the “evolution-vs-revolution” spectrum. Up to this point, our team  conversations have been uninspired and focused on individual data trends. My big  insight here was how powerful it was to have the team immerse themselves in

everything we’ve uncovered in the past 2 months all at once. That created a very  smooth flow into connecting the individual insights and themes. The team feels very  prepared to brainstorm based on insights, rather than hunches.     I was also surprised by how much people enjoyed the new and more hands-on  approach. Folks who typically multitask during meetings were fully engaged for the full  two hours.     An unexpected benefit was that we were able to identify gaps in our knowledge and  areas of focus for our upcoming ethnographic research.      APPROACH  Mind Mapping was definitely the right tool for our challenge. The next time I use the tool,  I will allow for more time. We were able to accomplish everything except defining the  brainstorming prompt questions. The group also felt a little rushed in the “browse the  gallery” time box, given the hug amount of info we had to peruse. Next time, I will extend  the workshop to 3 hours, and give participants 25-30 minutes for browsing and note  taking rather than 15. I will also get access to the conference room 45 minutes in  advance to set-up. The 30 minutes I allocated was not enough.     SNAPSHOTS

Prepping the materials  Mind Mapping in action

