Reflection – Visualization

Challenge

I am a newly graduated chemical engineer trying to form a business with a group of friends.  However, during my studies I was always immersed in an engineering environment where we all  "speak the same language" and you don't need so many explanations or arguments to understand  and agree.

Despite this, I realized that when I left my university environment and thought about  entrepreneurship I had to surround myself with a multidisciplinary work group and start  interacting with many people who were or were not engineers so I had to start looking for clear  and concise means to show my ideas, invite others to participate and allow good communication  and development of the venture within the team as well as outside it, always hand in hand with  innovation.

Selection

According to the above and my need to find a simple and economical tool to apply since I am a  person who is just knowing the job market I decided that visualization is a way to make my ideas  tangible and concrete, which can be from making a drawing, telling a story visually, take a picture  or make a map so that I can show others what I think and how I think. I used Visual Thinking, to  achieve a shared understanding of a problem space among a diverse group of stakeholders before  attempting to identify and define possible solutions to the problem, our venture.

Application

The way I applied this design tool was to give a starting point, introduce a drawing of a man  looking for fun, something tasty and classy waiting for a product: an alcoholic drink that would  provide him with this. From drawings associated with fun, taste and class each participant and  member of the working group generated drawings of what these 3 concepts meant to them and  what they related them to in their environment and in relation to products they already knew in  the market in order to bring innovation either by ideas from another industry, from their own past  or by recombining things that already exist. The idea with this is that from the 3 concepts the  members of the group could "show and expose visually" to the others their ideas and ways to  integrate them to the product from which the business would arise.

Once each person generated their visualization of how they would solve or approach our problem  of this "customer", the sheets with the drawings and ways of showing their ideas were rotated and  each one gave them to another member of the team until each visualization of solutions or ways  of creating a product of each member went through the other members under which each one was  going to evaluate: 1) value of the creation, 2) the concept and 3) what could not be solved with this  product. In this way, each expression of ideas of the members had a specific feedback from the  other participants of the company, so in the end all the ideas were adjusted, and a final decision  could be made.

Insight & Approach

What I have learned from conducting this exercise with my team is that the graphic ideas and  visualization tool helps a lot especially when involving diverse stakeholders with the objective of  focusing on a single idea, understanding the problem and being able to share their perspectives  so that others can easily and quickly understand them and develop the ideas into potential  business ideas. Many times, as an engineer I may tend to complicate things for others, to stay in  my comfort zone and not get out of the square box. Through visualization, drawing, and better  communication and feedback within my work group, I can make a difference, improving the  team’s relationship as well as generating better ideas and a more suitable and successful  development of them for the business

Since I discovered that the most valuable aspect is the shared insights and learning, next time I  would use the visualization activity as a starting point of the idea of the product. That is to say, I  would not start by putting forward an idea of what I want the product to be or of the specific  customer I am interested in because that closes the possibilities, limits the creativity of my  colleagues and decreases the level of innovation that we as a team can have, as well as possible  ideas thought of by my team that are not specifically related to what I have in mind at the time.  Then I will be able to apply the design tool as I did in the past and use the team's feedback to solve  problems and generate new products for the business.

