Assignment

Design Thinking Tool – Visualization

Challenge

I am the team lead in an industry report project in my organization a management consultancy, and have  been tasked with developing systemic solutions that will drive efficiency in the Nigerian retail sector that  will be featured in the report.

Nigeria's retail market accounted for 16% of GDP in 2009 and is expected to have a growth potential of  $40 billion by 2020. These projections were largely driven by a population of over 200 million, a growing  middle class, and rising urbanization, but have recently been under attack by macroeconomic and global  health issues.

Despite these enablers, the industry has encountered pervasive inefficiencies across 7 major factors vital  to the sector's resilience, with overwhelming 95 per cent of the sector's players remaining informal and  unstructured, compounded by the impact of COVID-19 and the economic situation of the nation, the  resilience of the sector is largely threatened.

Shifting to a system that aims to recognize patterns in the sector, and not just challenges, offers a systemic  strategy to enable significant improvement and accelerate efficiency and resilience across the retail value  chain.

Selection

To begin our journey, we first used the visualization tool to help us achieve a mutually agreed upon  upstream causes of the inefficiencies in the sector among relevant stakeholders. Visualization tool was  important to enable us define the scope of the problem faced by these retailers affecting their efficiency  ensuring we captured the perspective of the core stakeholders affected and that we were telling a story  that captured their reality.

Application

I began the process by drawing up infographics of what we as a management consultancy has learned  overtime from working with retailers on how poor business structure was a foundational cause to the  inefficiencies witnessed in the industry. The infographics contained a preliminary map that told the story  of how this dynamic was affecting other factors in the retail value chain and with the contribution and  shared insight of the stakeholders involved in the visualization process, we were able to create efficiently  a systems map linking the upstream causes to their downstream effects in the system and how they were  collectively impacting the current systems dynamic. We used this map to create a compelling ''as is''  systems story.

Insight

The most important insight gained was how important capturing the perspective of other stakeholders  helped shaped the final systems map that captured a unique view of the retail sector seen through the  lenses of different stakeholders representing the relevant retail value chain. It became glaring how  collaboration and storytelling through the aid of visualization was an important success factor in design  thinking.

Approach

Given my success with the report and how starting with problem visualization collaboratively helped  improve the outcome while ultimately enriching the report, id use the visualization tool as a starting point  for projects that deals with design thinking.

