Coursera course “Design Thinking for Innovation” by University of Virginia.

Submission for peer-graded assignment. Done on 1 March 2020.

Reflections on design thinking tool visualization

Challenge

Seeing is believing or a picture speaks a thousand words. Those common sayings  are also true in a business context. I’m working in a change team in a global bank  and I know, visualizing is key to help stakeholders understand a problem and also  help the to be able to create possible solutions.

Projects that we conduct may be about how to improve processes like how to  onboard new clients faster to the bank. During such projects, we face the following  challenges: 1) The current state of the process must be described by the involved  persons and written down in a form everyone understands it; 2) current shortcomings  of the process including pain points must be identified and 3) the client needs and  how he or she experiences the process must be clear to everyone so that the group  can think of an ideal future way how the onboarding process can be simplified.

Selection

Visualization has been proven to be an effective tool for us in the design of new and  improved processes. We found that a visualization of the current process on the wall  is the right method to understand the current process, discuss shortcomings and  pain points and also lead discussions how the ideal future state process might look  like.

Application

It’s important that we first understand the current state. With “we” I’m not only  referring to the change team but also to everybody involved in the process.  Everybody should know what they are actually doing. Conducting a workshop with all  parties involved, where we walk through an example client onboarding is an efficient  approach. We book a large meeting room where we can use the walls as drawing  boards and canvas. If needed, we stick brown paper on the walls, so we can draw  directly on it. We make sure, we find an appropriate slot where representatives of all  the involved parties have time and we invite them to a workshop.

During the workshop we then take a concrete onboarding example and the persons  in the room explain what they’re doing during this process. On the go, we would then  stick pictures of the involved persons (client, branch manager, etc.) on the wall. Also  the required documents during the onboarding (like account opening forms) will be  represented by sticky notes.

By looking at this visualization on the wall people can relate to their everyday  situation. They will remember problems and pain points that led to suboptimal

onboarding experiences for the clients. Those points will also be added to the  visualization. When workshop participants are explaining a concrete situation, they  can show it directly on the picture, where the difficulties occurred. This makes it  easier for everybody to follow. By moving sticky notes that represent documents or  approver flows, complications in the process are shown and understood by  everyone.

This hands-on visualization will also trigger new ideas how the process can be  simplified. By directly removing unneeded steps, the workshop participants see, how  the new process looks like and also if there are further challenges involved.

Insight

In my personal experience I found that the following points are important:

• The right representation and expertise needs to be in the room: Participants

need to have enough expertise to contribute to the current state process. It’s  also important, that everyone has time and the freedom to speak up. It  shouldn’t be that junior members are afraid to share their ideas just because  more senior members are blocking those thoughts.

• The host of the workshop needs to ensure that the group stays focussed. The

client views and needs must be the driving force. Other topics that are not  relevant for the current discussion should be assigned to a parking lot.

• The more hands-on the workshop and the visualization is, the better. From my

experience it’s also recommended to bring the visualization on the wall into a  format that can be used later. This can be done by drawing it on a sheet of  paper and scanning it so it can be shared with everyone after the workshop.

Approach

Beside conducting such workshops where we visualize processes, we also tested  other approaches. Conducting interviews just with one person at the time is an  approach that gives more insights for a detailed aspect. In contrast, missing on the  collective wisdom of the whole workshop group and by not visualizing the process,  can lead to missing links when we try to understand the process end-to-end. Also the  solution finding works better when more persons are involved and can relate to a  visual representation of the complete process.

A less successful way is also just to ask senior managers or so called experts who  are designing a process top-down. This will just give a theoretical view of the  situation and an unusable approach. It’s immanent that people who know the  situation on the ground are involved in the process design.

Conclusion

In my experience in a change team in a global bank, I achieved very good results by  applying the design thinking tool visualization in my workshops. This allowed me to  lead discussions how a future process should look like in order to deliver value for  the clients.

