Visualization

Challenge

I am a university student majoring in information systems, and as a student I always work on  projects with group of other students either in the same major or from other majors.  Moreover, as the time pass by, I always struggled with not being able to let the person Infront  of me understand what I am explaining especially if I am working on a project with students  from another majors. Furthermore, either they do not understand the idea or each person  visualize it in his own way and I cannot see how each person is visualizing my ideas, and this  lead me to search for a tool that will allow me and my group members to see a thing in one  way.

Selection

After facing the challenge through this course, I found out about the visualization tool, so I  chose this tool because it will give me and my group members a shared understanding of  whatever we are talking about either the problem or the proposed solution. Moreover,  visualization doesn’t require skills to do it is just visual thinking so even if I work with  people from different majors, we can use this tool easily. I addition, as Angela Myer  mentioned “What I've seen is that through practice, you can actually get better and better at  doing it”, so to master this tool the only thing you need to do is practice.

Application

As mentioned earlier working in a project with people and not being able to align your ideas  is hard and will not allow us to agree on one solution because the group didn’t a chive a  common understanding. Moreover, what I did is that I requested for a white board and a  marker in our meeting room because it will not only help with a better understanding but it  will also help with unlocking a different part of the brain and help us to be more creative  thinkers and come up with more ideas. Furthermore, after getting the white board I started to  explain everything whether it is a problem or solution using it to help align our ideas and  agree on one proposed solution.

Insight

After several meetings with the use of visualization tool what I noticed and learned is that  with the use graphics it will help the team members to incorporate their feedback and  strengthen their understanding of what you are explaining. For example, I draw a stick figure  of a man that is trying to open his hotel room door and I wanted them to give ideas that are  other than the card because our idea is go green, all the group members incorporated more  with me more than what we used to and then we came up with one solution and I visualize it  and all the members got the idea more easily than what we are used to and we agreed in one  solution much faster than before because they developed a better understanding.

Approach

Since I discovered that with the use of visualization each person can explain his/her idea in a  more efficient way next time I will let all the group members to brainstorm after  understanding the problem for few minutes and then I will let each one to visualize his/her  own idea on the white board and let every member give his idea to the proposed solution.

