The secret store – Visualización

Challenge

The intended target of this experiment is something that current stakeholders are not expert, the  challenge is to develop and analyze problem and potential solutions considering the people that is  generating the idea are not expert on this specific topic.

Selection

The tool that I decided to use was Visualization, or Visual Thinking, the reason behind the decision to use  this tool begin whit the need of understand the problem before attempting to determine a possible  solution, to help determining the problem, interviews, research and questionnaires were used to  identify what the problem was. I decided to use this approach because most people I know prefer  learning and paying attention to visual material, this approach will help me to get people attention and  determine opportunities and potential improvement solutions.

As reference for the consideration made on Visualization and the use of mind mapping, I used book  “Designing for Growth” from Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie.

Application

I start the process by creating a mind map. To develop the mind map, I research and read all existing  material to create thinking base line. If material or information was not available, I used interviews and  questionnaires in social media, this help to create a data base with key variables to evaluate and  determine problem statement.

To standardize the exercise with stakeholders, I decided to provide paper to write the ideas and  generate a brainstorming environment in which each stakeholder explain the idea, after getting the  ideas of all the group, we were seven people working with this exercise, I started to develop the mind  mapping, considering each idea generated by the group, we evaluated in detail each element generated  by the brainstorm and included those elements that the group considered key for the development of  the mind map.

The exercise last 1 hour in which the stakeholders were able to generate ideas of potential problem  solution, team answered key questions like who will your supplier be? How does the location should  look like? Who will be the main costumer? After this starting exercise each stakeholder was able to  summarize their answers and present them to the group, before building the mind mapping the team  discuss each stakeholder answer then team started to create mind mapping.

Insight

What I have learned from conducting this exercise is that Visualization is very powerful tool to identify  root cause of a problem or even to develop and present a potential problem solution, at the end of my

session with the stakeholders, we ended up with a mind mapping of problem and a wide different  potential causes, this helped the team to have a more robust problem evaluation and then determine  next steps related with  The secret store project.

Approach

There were a couple lessons learned with this exercise, what I would do different next time is to prepare  the scenario before the session, when I said prepare the scenario I mean peripherals like board, pen,  pencil, colors, post it etc. All these elements are key to have a successful exercise, you can save time if  you have all material you require before the beginning of the exercise, additional to this as a lesson  learn I would limit the time the stakeholders or the team have to discuss other members ideas, people  could get distracted if a discussion gets longer.

Example of mind mapping developed for stakeholders and full team.

