Reflection – Visualisation

Challenge & Selection

The tool I used from the Design Thinking course was Visualisation.

I’m a Product Manager working in a large corporate environment developing digital communication solutions  for small businesses. Many small businesses struggle in finding safe and secure ways to interact with their  customers online especially when it comes to sending sensitive documents. The main problems they encounter  include “trust” with current offerings and this is mainly around where their customer data is stored (overseas or  onshore), “security” in knowing that the person they are sending this data to is in fact that person and “cost”  where physical channels used such as the current post system are expensive and present risk of lost items.

I was keen to utilise the visualisation tool when interviewing potential small businesses about the current  problems they are facing when sending important communications to customers. I anticipated that this would  assist me in digging deeper into their issues and problems but also in building rapport in a short space of time –  an important element when trying to start and develop a conversation with a potential small business when we  want them to become life-long customers of our business. I anticipated that being able to draw the flow of their  day-to-day operations would enable us to “visualise” what their business looked like today and what it could  look like tomorrow.

Application

I found that the initial meetings were very much an “interview” style where I would ask questions, they would  respond, and I would take notes. This didn’t really bode very well for creating an atmosphere of inclusion and  building rapport. Reviewing the material from Module 1 of the course, I thought about using visualisation as a  way to build the interaction between me and the small business owner. Visualisation is an important part of the  design thinking process and can be used through problem analysis, ideation, prototyping, and implementation  and feedback sessions. It’s important as it allows all parties to see the world in the same way (as opposed to  seeing the world differently when we use words only).

When applied effectively, the tool can enhance the process, but more importantly, induce a behavioural  response in small business owners that allows them to be involved in the experience. A number of times, we  sketched out the current way a small business owner would currently send really important documents to their  customers and they couldn’t believe the number of steps they went through to send those communications. We  used pictures to convey this journey (a printer to print the document, a person walking to a post office, a  postman delivering the communication). And this was only the current state of play! When we started to map  out the desired journey or the “What If” journey, most of the small business owners would join me up at the  whiteboard and draw the pictures themselves. I found this to be really engaging and there was an implied belief  that we were both working to solve this problem together.

Insight

What I discovered was that visualisation, when used effectively, can be an amazing tool to see the world in a  different way and to build rapport with potential customers. The nice thing about visualisation is that there are  no boundaries to the process. I say this because it became quite apparent that although we were talking about  secure communications, another five or six opportunities opened up which came from the small business owner  drawing some pictures on a board! I also believe that visualisation represents a freedom of expression for a lot  of people who are not used to it. This really helped to build rapport and start a conversation with those  customers – so much so that they are now our early adopters of our product and are happy to provide feedback  when they feel like giving it.

Approach

Given that we are at the beginning of our process, the visualisation tool was the appropriate tool to use to gather  insights around the “What Is” and “What If” processes. Other approaches we will use will be the mind-mapping  approach in order for us to analyse the data we currently have and to determine patterns that we can work with  to define the problem better and possibly start some ideation.

