Reflection note – My first mind mapping session

1. Challenge:

My working place has a high turnover in relations to employees resigning faster than the  firm would like. I have recently been assigned the responsibility of reducing the high  turnover, aiming to make employees staying for a longer time by trying to create a better  workplace. In this project I want to use a design thinking approach finding insights that will  lead to design criteria’s that again will lead to a portfolio of ideas to test incrementally.  Furthermore, my challenge would be to include the stakeholders in the process of solving  this task with a design thinking approach, as they believe in the linear approach of project  execution.

2. Selection:

Up until now I have had open end interviews to map out what the employees are missing at  their working place. Furthermore, I have done a good amount of secondary research,  harvesting interesting data, for example experts take on a good work place. My challenge is  to translate all this data into insights and further into design criteria’s that will be useful for  the project. I will try the mind mapping tool to transform the data into useful design criteria.  I intend to follow the seven mind mapping steps;

1. Make gallery of all my data.   2. Invite the projects stakeholders to join the opening of the “gallery”. In this project

that will be some employees, the board and the three CEO’s of the company.  Asking them if I can pick their brain and borrow their intuition for a session.

3. Offer tours. Let the stakeholders watch and enjoy the “gallery”  4. Pick out the good stuff. Ask the stakeholders to browse the “gallery” individually

and ask them to take notes on any learning they think should inform new ideas to  make our working place better.

5. Cluster the good stuff. Thereafter I will ask my stakeholders to sit down in teams,

4-5 people, and cluster their notes together.

6. Make connections. Let the stakeholders make connections between the clusters.   7. From the clusters and the connections, we will together see if we can extract

insights. After extracting insights, we will transform the insights into design  criteria.

Reference to the video lecture: video number 3, third week.

3. Application:

Execute phase of the mind mapping session started by explaining shortly but convincingly to  the stakeholders why I invited them for a gallery session the next week. I got surprisingly  many good responses, and everybody was in.

There next, I carefully planned the session, trying to pick out the right words to

create engagement, but not come across as to creative to be taken seriously.

The day before I printed all the material, that being secondary research and deep

interviews as well as quantitative data from a survey held for the employees. The gallery  looked nice, and I also worked hard to visualize and make the data approachable.

With a little champagne in the glass, some strawberries on a table and some nice and

calm lounge music, the stakeholders easily jumped into the gallery idea and was hungry to  explore the data on the walls. They went around browsing the “gallery” individually, and in  the role of the curator, they took notes on any learning they thought could spark new ideas  to make our working place better.

After they had browsed and taken notes for a while, I gathered them in 5 diverse groups

of 4 people each where they clustered their notes together. After clustering, they made  connections between the clusters. When the stakeholders where done with making  connections, they shared their findings. Together we identified insights and transformed the  insights into design criteria.

4. Insight

I found it very interesting to use the learning approach to solve a problem. After defining the  design criteria, the brainstorming process seemed more useful and giving, as we knew we  were making solutions that where based in real insights. As well as the insights we based our  ideas on where extracted together in cross functional teams with a huge diversity. I did not  only create more broad and useful ideas, it also created more engagement around the  project, and after finishing this session the work place seems genuinely interested in what  solutions we will test in the coming weeks.

5. Approach

I will try to implement all the four questions next time I jump into a project like this, but  when it comes to executing a mind mapping session, I have come to realize that creativity  does not stand in the way of being perceived as taking my project serious. The stakeholders  loved the gallery with its strawberries, champagne and music – they engagement increased  as the roleplay frames where leveled up. Next time I will go further into the stakeholder’s  role as the curator – making them try to curate together – making the design criteria the  exhibition. Though I did learn that trying to make design criteria’s all together in one room  did not work, making them loose engagement and dragging out the session using too much  time.  I will try to make the design criteria’s in groups next time.

