Design Thinking for Innovation – Final Assignment

by Claudia Perez

Challenge and Selection:      As a Venezuelan, wanting to help my country overcome all the difficult situations led me

to one of the most beautiful and fulfilling experiences: Community Service. My desire to help  others who I knew were not capable of helping themselves made me commit to a cause that  made me the woman I am today. For the past three years I have been involved in an non-profit  organization that dedicates all their resources to helping these affected communities around  certain cities in Venezuela, by giving them food and medical resources, playing with the kids in  their schools or parks near the zone, and helping families with their situation by offering jobs to  the parents and education for their children.

This has been an incredible challenge for me and for the rest of the members of the

organization, and with time, we have achieved wonderful goals that at the beginning seemed  almost impossible. Mind Mapping was one of the most useful tools that helped us accomplish  great things, and without it, I think we would have taken another course of action that would  have not been as successful as the one we followed. This design tool made us look for patterns  and themes in the data we collected inside the communities we were working with, and made it  easier to move from the “What is?” to the “What if?”. As said in the lectures, mind mapping  involves studying and analyzing the minds of our customers, not only ours individually, and  thanks to this, we were available to translate the collected insights to concrete ideas.     Application:      The organization started in 2014, and after a long process of identifying the opportunity

and necessities in several communities, we started scoping our project. We applied the Mind  Mapping tool to get a more thorough and concrete insight of what was happening in these  communities, along with what the members of them thought and worried about. We did  interviews, talked with a great amount of people, and observed from different points of view the  situation to try and come up with the better solution. These three things helped us identify  insights and translate them into ideas and concepts.

The process of moving from exploring the reality to envision a new future and

opportunity, although it sounds fast and easy, it was instead long and difficult, but completely  necessary. Learning about what the members of those communities thought and felt as a way of  mapping the mind of our customers was what helped us focus in specific data to find a more  creative and useful solution. At the end, the organizations scoped a more focused and specific  plan to attend the food, medical and economic situation of the members of selected communities  in Venezuela by creating a space that offered jobs for the unemployed, food for the community,  medical assistance for those in need, and entertainment facilities for the children. The Mind  Mapping tool was applied successfully and effectively in the project, and made possible for us  (the organization) to obtain better results.

Insight and Approach:       After applying the Mind Mapping tool to the plans of the organizations regarding food,

medical, economic, and entertainment resources in the selected deprived communities in  Venezuela, the focus of the whole plan shifted to a higher and better solution. Getting to know  the minds of our customers and focusing on them instead of what the organization thought and  consider as a group, gave us an advantage and a better visualization of the situation. Thanks to  this design tool, we gain a lot of new data, making possible to get a bigger approach in the project  we were proposing. Mind Mapping let us expand our knowledge, as well as our focus on solving  some of the necessities in the mentioned Venezuelan communities.

The whole course helped me change my way of thinking and understanding the world,

gave me incredible tools to be applied in different situations, and made it possible to find more  innovative and creative solutions to multiple problems around me. I consider that not only the  Mind Mapping tool, but also the storytelling, visualization and learning launch tools were really  helpful for this project. I also think that along with the mind mapping, the learning launch tool  would have contributed too to the organization and its plans, but it is never too late to try new  things, learn and improve from them.

