Reflection – Mind Mapping

Challenge

I am part of an environmental consultancy junior company (a company formed only by  students), currently I am at the operations and commercial group. Recently we faced a  problem with a client, he proposed a job beyond our area of study, so we had to search on the  internet all the information available to come up with a solution. It was exhausting because, as  said in this course, internet is full of information and it is hard to filter it.

Selection

With all the data collected we needed a tool to filter it. The more adequate tool is mind  mapping to find patterns and look for insights in the middle of all this data.

Application

Me and my team contact one of our mentor professors and he indicated a PhD professor in the  area of the client´s problem. We arranged a meeting to discuss what we had to learn and what  tools were necessary to came up with a solution in this yet “unknown field”. After the meeting  we were able to filter the most import data taking into consideration what the labor market  was expecting. Each person in the team shared ideas to present for our client, here we used  “post-it” method. After sharing ideas, we categorized and ranked them.

Insight

Applying a design thinking method (talk to people and understand deeply the problem) with  mind mapping (brainstorm ideas and categorize them) gave us a north to not get anxious  about the size of data and present an adequate solution to a problem beyond our knowledges.  The experience was also enriching in the learning process.

Approach

Visualization of the ideas proved to be highly effective, next time I would start using this tool  since the first meeting with the client, to save hours of meetings trying to explain the problem  to others.

