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Challenge

The organization, for which I work, is an IT service provider, but apart from services, lately one of the  strategic focusses is creating more IPs. IPs can be source of non-linear revenue for the growth for the  organization. The challenge in front of my team was to utilize a technology platform to create new IP  products. Hence, the immediate problem was to identify the use cases, which can be conceptualized on  the platform.

To achieve that, our team conducted a 2 day long workshop, where we invited people of different  domains – healthcare, energy & utilities, banking & finance, retail etc under one roof. The group had to  discuss the problems in their domain. By the end of day 2, the group was to identify a few indicative use  cases, which can be developed.

Selection

I selected Visualization tool for facilitating the discussion. Visualization tool is one the simplest and most  intuitive tools for design thinking. It is about putting thoughts in form of simple visuals, which can be as  simple as a hand-drawn circle. Visualization tool is well explained in the Visualisation tool video at link  https://www.coursera.org/learn/uva-darden-design-thinking-innovation/home/week/1.

I used this tool as we were at the preliminary stage of the engagement. People had gathered from  diverse domains and varied technical expertise. They had different ways of expressing themselves.  Everyone was expressing same ideas in different manner, so visualization tool was required to give  discussion a direction.

Application

At the start of the workshop, I reiterated the objectives and deliverables of the workshop. I wrote them  on a chart paper and pasted in the conference room, so that people can go back to the agenda  whenever, there is a deviation.

We also had a quick round of introduction among people. Then, one by one every individual started  telling a use case, which they think is important for their clients. As a person explained a use case with  reasoning, a person was recording details in an excel sheet, projected on a larger screen. I wrote the  same on another white board in form of visuals. I wrote use cases in 2-3 word phrases enclosed in a  circle on a big white board. As someone comes up with another related idea, I joined it with a central  idea using a line. At the end of the discussion, we had a spoke and hub model, something like below.  The hub represented the main theme, with similar or supporting ideas a spokes.

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It gave everybody direction, that how different use cases can be interlinked together. Redundant ideas  were also combined using this approach. I

Insight

It is an interesting and challenging task to bring people together and collaboratively discuss on a  problem. Design thinking is a powerful thinking to do collaborative thinking.

It was my first design-thinking workshop that I co-facilitated with a team member. I got inspired by the  power of it and would not shy away from targeting problems using this technique. At the end of 2 day  workshop, we got some really interesting use cases to work on. We are planning to conduct deep dive  design thinking discussions in next few weeks, for each of the identified use cases to conceptualize  them.

Approach

A different approach which could have been used is mind mapping. People could have been divided into  group of 4-5 people, for each domain. Each group could have a chart paper to draw mind maps of their  ideas and later present it to the entire group. We would probably explore this idea in our future  workshops. Mind mapping technique would have engaged the audience much more.

