1. Challenge: Update a Company performance report for Senior Leadership.

Our CEO wanted me to update a daily company performance monitoring report.  I was tasked to  improve the spreadsheet that Senior Leadership used to monitor performance. My challenge was  to understand what exactly Senior Leadership wanted to know.

2. Selection: Visualisation tool

I chose this tool because I have found it to be the best way of communicating and testing ideas  with stakeholders.  Visualisation spans all the steps in the design process (Angela Meyer, Module  1 video 8). From my experience I have found visualisation as a fantastic tool for developing  prototypes for users to experiment with.

3. Application: Communication and design tool

First I used visualisation in the form of an organisation chart to understand which business  group(s) reported to who.  By constructing this I knew who my stakeholders were.  After this I  conducted a series of mind-mapping workshops to identify the questions/themes that stakeholders  wanted to know, differentiating between things they ‘must’ know and ‘nice to have’.  I then used a  visual aide in the form of a Venn Diagram to illustrate the common ‘must have’ themes and the  common ‘nice to have’ themes, and presented this back to the stakeholders for acceptance.

Second I used another visualisation tool in the form of flow diagrams to understand the current  business processes underlying these themes, and the current information flow detailing how data is  collected, collated, and reported.

Through my investigation I discovered that the issue management had with reporting was not an  outdated table, but ‘having no access to infographics that are easy to read and current’. So,  through iterative prototype design I developed a browser based dashboard that gave graphical  interactive representations of performance data in real-time. The end result was positive.  The  CEO and Senior Management were highly pleased with the new user friendly and live dashboard.

4. Insight: Identifying the underlying issue

The insight I gained from applying the visual tool was in identifying that the issue was not just  merely an out-dated reporting table, but a broader issue of Senior Management not having direct  access to easily understandable performance information to aide them in their decision making.

5. Approach: Quicker prototyping

I continue to use this model, but next time I would simplify my prototypes.  Instead of trying to  make a fully operational version as a prototype, which took too much time.  I will scale back and  develop a prototype to convey the ‘look’ and ‘feel’ of the tool.  This will be quicker to develop  and test.

