Guido Ahmad

For Darden School of Business

Elisa Ingram

Design Thinking for Innovation

18 January 2018

Reflection - Visualization

Challenge & Selection  I regularly use the tool of visualization to gain a shared understanding in diﬀerent

situations:

When the scope of a concept is unclear because diﬀerent stakeholders use diﬀerent terms

to describe the same object or the same term to describe diﬀerent objects

When the boundaries of one kind of requirement to a diﬀerent kind of requirement are

fuzzy

When user groups of any kind of solution are not properly deﬁned, not selective or

selectable

In my projects to design and architect digital solutions for diﬀerent user groups, it is

essential to have a common understanding of user groups, user needs, and solution

boundaries. Words alone, even when arranged in tables are not suﬃcient to get a clear

picture of what word or label is describing which part of the concept.

Application  We start the process by collecting the central terms, requirement classes, user personae and

groups and trying to bring one object in connection with all other objects. Instead of using

one of the standardized notations of the Object Management Group or similar bodies - like

eg UML - we use an open discussion in front of a ﬂipchart or on a piece of paper. Together

we draw pillars, quadrants, overlapping circles or a spectrum of diﬀerent classes sorted by a

speciﬁc criterion.

�1

Consider diﬀerent types of digital interaction channels with established, current, or future

user interfaces. The team came up with ideas of using mobile apps, sending eMail, oﬀering a

web portal, chats or bots. Which seems to be an selection of ideas, some of them

overlapping, like chats or bots.

By properly arranging them and classifying from perspectives of digital versus non-digital

(physical), speed of expected interaction response, and common types of interface

classiﬁcation used, like GUI or CUI, we came up with the following result:

Insight & Approach  The result was not reached by drawing the ﬁnal digital and non-digital channels in the

correct order right from the start, but by writing down diﬀerent aspects and terms on sticky

notes in a 15-minute mini-session and than trying to arrange and re-arrange those sticky

notes left right according to diﬀerent criteria.

Why is the chat eg. not a digital channel and why is the bot left from it? From the rationale

that in the higher speed of expected response a bot might be faster than a person siTing at

the other and of the chat, those two might be interchanged. On the other hand, the bot is

automatically answering and as such a more digital method of interaction. As for our

current digital strategy plannings the separation and interplay between digital and physical

is the more important aspect compared with the actual velocity of interaction, we decided to

keep that order…

…for the current version 1.0 of our interaction visualization. The approach will be to stick

with that version until we have the requirement to consider a diﬀerent aspect and then

might rearrange the channels according to speed or add a second dimension. The graphic

will be revised on an ongoing basis.

�2

Letter

eMail

Web Site or Portal

Mobile App

Bot

Chat

Phone

Visit

Physical

Digital

Physical

Lower speed of direct interaction

Higher speed of direct interaction

Graphical UI

Conversational UI

Read & Write User Interface (UI)

