Mind Mapping the Web Portal

Challenge & Selection:

Mind Mapping is a tool that has empowered not just artists and designers around the world but also  engineers, managers, corporate and bureaucratic leaders. I recently joined a new B2B insure-tech  start-up that was facing lot of issues on the design and user-friendly front of their website and web- portal, which was not only frustrating for the client but also their customers. Clearly, the only  solutions the management saw was fixing the design and making it more user friendly, since the  backend infrastructure was running smoothly and did not give much trouble. Identifying the  problem was a good start, but the approach to address the problem was the real battle. Mind  mapping is a tool which would equip us to follow the situations at every stage of the journey.

Application:

When it comes to using Mind mapping to design how a certain feature will look like, it was essential  for us to ascertain why there were so many issues with the site in the first place, and what were the  elements that were making the web portal not so user friendly. We interacted with the client  stakeholders along with their customer base to identify where the gap was. Our team sat with them  for about 30 minutes and performed the journey on the portal and noted down all the hurdles they  faced. It didn’t matter if what they faced was very petty, intuitively, it would still be considered a  challenge.

This gave us some insight into what was wrong with the current portal, and what tweaks and  changes were required. We were exposed to things that we initially hadn’t thought of or assumed  but were hidden and appeared in front of the user base. We were certain about one thing that the  portal had no definite problem, per se. If that would have been the case then the entire product  would have suffered. But that wasn’t the case. There was no doubt that we had to change the  complete design but the fundamental structure remained the same.

This will save time and potential human resources as we won’t have to change the very core of the  portal. So, we started out with simple wireframe designs according to the data collected from the  customer feedback. This was the most crucial part, because the gap between customer mindset and  the portal was now clear. We carefully followed the journey that the customer would see, in the  wireframe. We factored in the problems that were commonly faced by the most users, and focused  on them rigorously. After the designs were ready, they were tested by the engineering team and  internal stakeholders who were unaware of this exercise just to get feedback from fresh pair of eyes.  After the changes raised from the internal feedback team were addressed, we tested this out on  some of the customers and found that there was progress and the new designs were better,  intuitively, than the previous ones. Once the complete model was ready, and we received the sign- offs from management and client, the portal went live and registered a very positive feedback from  the customers in the ease of handling the portal and how happy they were after using the portal.

Insights/Approach:

Mind mapping is a great tool for solving problems like these that might look daunting and time  consuming. But the very approach of it being so organised and moderated makes it very easy. All the  data from the feedback helped us understand “What is” part of our challenge and gave clarity on  this front. Making wireframes and prototypes helped us analyse “What if” and “What wows” section  of this design thinking approach. Finally, the testing part helped us understand “what works” and the

entire journey was culminated into a satisfactory customer service, a happy client and a jubilant  management team.

Such kind of an impact is made when you solve a certain challenge with the help of design tools like  Mind mapping. I was amazed to see the results, which were not only quick and saved us time but  also gave us accurate satisfactory results.

In future, I will be starting with design thinking tools like Mind Mapping to solve such challenges with  ease and without sacrificing time or productivity of the organisation as a whole.

