DESIGN THINKING PROJECT

Tool: Mind Mapping

Challenge and selection

The chosen tool is “Mind Mapping”. Mind Mapping, as described in the lecture provided by  the Design Thinking for Innovation course, is about looking for patterns and insights in the  large quantity of date the person has collected during the exploration of What is. This tool  will also create a link for the next step, which is What If. To be clearer, Mind Mapping is a  technique with various steps that helps to organize ideas about what the situation, event or  challenge is about.

So, what is the situation about? A general about what I want to attempt to give solution is the  poor working environment in a public institution. For that, it is very needed to get a general  vision of the causes and effects of this event, as in the whole context, before having ideas of  how to solve it. Finally, I’ll require the participation of the coordinators and the community  of the organization, to obtain different points of view and diverse thoughts on this activity.  That’s what Mind Mapping is for.

Application

As it was explained before, Mind Mapping has a series of steps. The first one, as stated in  the lecture provided by the Design Thinking for Innovation course, is to think of it as if we  were holding a yard sale. So, Mind Mapping begins with laying out the data we’ve collected  prior using this tool. I refer to data as all the information catered that involves the situation,  which is the poor working environment. For example, applying some tests and interviews to  the people who work in this public institution, separating them by departments or areas, tests  to evaluate how they perceive the reality of this problem, since they’re the ones being affected  by it.

After that, it is needed to organize that information in a large place, it could be a board, or a  table, so everyone can see it clearly. I select the ones that can help me better to discover what  is going on, what effects this has on the people, and what could be the reasons behind the  situation. Then, people from the institution are invited to look at this big panel, in 5 groups  of 10 and given 20 minutes, which has a lot of ideas, not yet connected but that will be after  they participate in the activity. The goal for this step is to ask them, while interacting and  offering feedback to each other:

 What they think of it.   What they think is missing.   What they think it is not necessary to consider.   What they would change or not.

Once that it is finished, they are asked to leave those comments in Post-it notes to stick them  over the information presented, be it positive or negative ones. This activity is solved in 20  minutes. This helps to learn new ideas from their perspective, since Design Thinking is about

empathizing, and what matters the most is the satisfaction of the client, in this case, the group  of people that belong to this organization.

Finally, the last step is to identify the insights related to each cluster and look for connections  between them. This is to be solved with their participation in another 20 minutes, while  noticing the way the ideas they contributed to this map are related. After all of this process,  there is only one question left: “If anything were possible, what criteria would your new  design meet?” The answer to that will help to jump onto the next activity of the Design  Thinking process.

Insight and Approach

What was learned through working on this exercise is that it is very important to consider the  opinion of other people and accept their advices and comments. Mind Mapping is a very  efficient technique when it comes to collecting information and taking the person in  consideration, since this exercise is addressed to them.

It is probably something new to the people from this institution, too, because decisions within  the organization are taken without their knowledge. It helps to make them feel connected,  that their perspective is valid, and to make them participate on the situation, and also invited  them to think of the context of an event they are involved in.

In conclusion, the chosen tool in this opportunity will be used on a next time, since it came  with great results, and it helped me to have a different perspective on a situation that happens  in real life.

