Visualization

Challenge

When I worked as a Management Consultant in my previous Job, I faced the recurring  challenge of being exposed to very complex situations. In one case we were brought in  because a company wanted to optimize their output of one production line. The Problem  was that they could not oversee the complex connection of the variating production times  in their value stream. They buried themselves in data and could not ﬁnd an solution.

Selection

For me the selection of a tool was very clear. Since there was no way to see through the  complexity of the situation simply by accumulation data in a spreadsheet the decision was  made to use visualization to gain understanding of the challenge. Visualization would help  us to one the one hand to create a workﬂow which allowed to oversee process as a whole  and on the other hand to create something that the involved people could actually touch  and feel. This would reduce the overall complexity tremendously because all the people  involved hat a common understanding of the status quo without any room for  interpretations and misunderstandings. Just as Angela Meyer described in the video  „Visualization tool“ in week 1 mapping out the process would help us commonly  understand the situation.

Application

When we started we can to crawl our way through data to initially gain understanding of  how the pieces ﬁt together. Given the available software nowadays to create visualization  we ﬁrst thought we could utilize them for presenting a set and done visual map of how  thing where going right now and how things could actually work. Having prepared such a  map on the computer we approached the meeting and presented our work. A few minutes  into the presentation I realized our fully prepared visual map would confuse the  participants just as much as the data in a spreadsheet.  I needed to make it even more simple and touchable. Thats when we as a group started to visualize the process on a whiteboard. Everybody  was able to contribute and add their thoughts to the visual and so we found the solution.  Thats was when I realized that using Visualization as a design thinking tool does not mean  creating something on your own at your desk. It means working together in a group of  people and being creative together.

Insights

When we used sketching on a whiteboard to capture the situation and solve the puzzle I  was surprised by how excited these managers got to contribute to the solution. You could  feel the energy ﬂowing and the ideas just kept coming. I would never have thought that  gathering in front of a whiteboard with managers both young and elderly would result in  such a driven team collaboration. This moment gave me a very unique perspective. I saw  the power of the visualization tool ﬁrst hand and I kept on going back to it ever since.  Using this tool you can reach a totally new level of working in a group because everybody  has the same understanding of what is going on.

Approach

What I have learned from this very situation are two main things. One is that visualization  is an amazing tool to gather thoughts of a group of people and second that it has to be a  process of creativity and collaboratively creating the visual. Only in that way the full  potential can be unfolded. Next time I will deﬁnitely use this way to start with. I am convinced of the power of the tool and I will continue to use it in my work life. Design  thinking in this way has provided me with a go-to solution whenever a situation is stuck  and people can´t get a common picture of what is happening.

