REFLECTION – VISUALIZATION

CHALLENGE

I think I’ve chose a challenge that is quite similar to The Good Kitchen story on the first week, a  government-sponsored meal plan for elder people in Denmark, where they have some specific  situations than hadn’t been solved effectively, but with the design thinking approach,  understanding people’s explicit and unarticulated needs and after a collaborative work they  created a whole solution for all the problems and needs. I work in the design team of a furniture- making company, and our clients are other companies that sell our products, we design for fast  and massive production. The company’s growth has been very notorious and for some time now  the teams have been complaining about some issues between them:

-  The teams being unable to accomplish the tasks on time.

-  The very little knowledge of the other team’s tasks, possibilities, methods, etc.

-  Mistakes in the information the design team gives to the production area, which causes  delays on production processes.

-  Very short deadlines given on very detailed and complex tasks.

-  Poor specifications on commercial requests for new designs or product development.

-  Continuous negative stimuli, when there’s a problem.

That’s why my challenge is to improve the communication between the teams in the company  and get them to work as a single team.

SELECTION

My challenge it’s also a bit different from the other examples given during the lectures, this time is  not about getting to know a client or user, but creating value for ourselves and the company  instead, the same group of people that will be the design thinking team, so every member of the  team will cooperate and not only give their own deep knowledge about their area of work (as they  are the users we’re trying to create a valuable solution, but their different points of view on a  multidisciplinary design thinking team. That’s one of the reasons why I think the visualization tool  could be the most appropriate for the two first phases of the process (what is? –what if?)

The best way to get the people of the team to understand the processes of each of the areas of  the company is to make it a tangible and visual explanation with videos, images, maps, etc. that  will make all that information more understandable, it will make sure the team will know and  understand the important aspects of each area of work. As Angela Myer mentions in the video on  the first week: On the investigation/exploration phase, this tool will help us imagine situations,  processes, people which we’re trying to create value for, the innovation, the value creation for the  user is centered on having a rich understanding of the context.

The visualization tool in this case will let us create a whole, detailed image of each one of the  processes and areas of the company, so we will have a broader vision of our problem, a precise  idea of what’s going on.

APPLICATION

To achieve the ideal purpose of this design tool, we have to define the members of the team, one  or two people representing each one of the areas of work in the company. Later, each one of  those people will collect all the information necessary beside their own team (work team) so the  design thinking team will have a realistic vision of the area with the visual information provided by  the representative person of each area.

Then, the design thinking team will gather in a place where they all can comfortably see all the  collected information. Each one of the members will give a very detailed visual explanation of the  functions, processes and all about their area. The design team for example, those things will be  explained with process maps, images, layouts of the workspace and the daily flow, as shown in the  next images:

INSIGHT

On the exploration phase, the visualization tool allowed us to find very relevant aspects of the  problema/situation, that otherwise we wouldn’t have seen:

-  We found linking aspects between areas, where collaboration between them is key when  trying to make the easier and effective so we can obtain better results.

-  The people and the work teams are always far from each other, not only in the physic  work space (divided spaces, separated teams, closed individual offices, etc) but individual  work is promoted every day.

-  The company’s structure is pyramidal instead of linear; they give bosses and statuses a  great relevance.

-  Both creativity and standardization are very important in the company

One of the most important insights is that to achieve our purpose of working as a team, applying  this tool we’ve already started to work as a team, we’re starting to reach our goal, with the design  thinking approach we will discover things of our teams, and how we can work as one, we will find  tools and methods to improve the communication between us.

APPROACH

Next time, I would use the same design tool but in a different way, which needs the cooperation  and participation of people from outside the company that will gave us an objective and different  perspective of the situation and the company.

The visualization tool was effective and suitable in this situation because leaded us to a much  better understanding of the processes and behavior of the other areas in the company, which let  us continue on the “what is?” Phase, so we can begin to investigate the general origin of the  problem (not only at the company): teamwork.

