Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection

The one tool I used was the tool of Mind Mapping, to look for patterns, it's used to look for insights, that lead to more creative solutions to our design challenge. Mind mapping is one of the most powerful tools in the design thinker's toolbox. In the first phase of design thinking process, we take a look at the current reality. At what is. In doing so, we amass a huge amount of data. Before moving to the next phase, what if, we need to distill all that data into information and insights that can be easily communicated. This is just what mind mapping does well. Mind mapping is looking for patterns and insights in a large quantity of data we collect during our exploration of what is the current reality. The goal is to establish criteria for the what-if idea generation phase which will come next. This phase is pivotal in the design thinking process. Mind mapping provides a seaway from what is to what if. Mind mapping is an engaging alternative to that giant report we might otherwise have written to sum up and communicate in prose and charts and spreadsheets. All that our team uncovered. And we hope that somebody will read the giant report that we had generated. Mind mapping is more intuitive. It's more creative. It's more visual, and it's more engaging. David Kelley, the founder of IDEO said, when I want to do something analytical, I make a list. When I'm trying to do something creative, I make a mind-map.

Application

I started the Mind Mapping process to show up which concepts are more important. Which concepts are connected to which. It's very visual. Note, however, it's all a representation of my mind, the process of creating it involved only me. In design thinking we use the mind mapping process to capture and represent the minds of our customers. That's minds, minds, of our customers. I involved our colleagues in order to develop a common mind among them regarding the current reality of a design challenge. Through mind mapping, we extracted meaning from data in a way that lets patterns and insights emerge. Patterns and insights we might otherwise have missed, as we sorted piecemeal through the data, to generate that report I mentioned. The design thinking process of generating the map, deliberately involved many stakeholders. We were not looking for an answer to our design challenge at this point or even possible answers. Mind Mapping is a great way to align the organization around a common understanding of the current reality. This can be a big help as you move forward in the design process.

Insight & Approach

What I have learned from conducting this exercise with several groups is really intriguing.Step one was to decide to hold the yard sale/ art gallery. Then I invited some shoppers or gallery-goers to attend the sale or view the gallery. I offered tours of the sale/ the gallery, letting our guests wander through at their own pace. Our guests in teams discussed what appealed to them and to the group similar set of items. Then my team identified insight to get translated it into design criteria. So I've lots of items for our yard sale / gallery. Then I have lots of information that my team gathered from sorts of sources to bring the current reality to light. I have some customer diaries, through which I got some ethnographic interview results. I have some formal quantitative data, in fact I now probably have a lot of formal quantitative data, charts, graphs. I even have some really creative output our consumers generated using projective techniques.

You should have at least ten people, but you can have as many as 50, depending on the space you have. Equip each gallery-goer with a clipboard, a bold marker, and a bunch of medium-sized sticky notes. Ask them to browse through the gallery on their own, with or without talking to one another. Ask them to pick out the good stuff. That is, ask them to note on separate sticky notes any item they believe might inform new ideas. Now be sure you've reminded them of the design challenge so they have that mind as they browse. Ask them to take note of what fits, as well as what doesn't fit. Sometimes the good stuff is what appears to be an outlier. Allow at least 30 minutes for this step. After the participants have viewed the gallery, ask them to return to the workshop room, arranging themselves at tables of five to six participants each. Before they start to share their good stuff, give them about ten minutes to review their own sticky notes and group them into themed clusters on their clipboard. Then the sharing starts. Have one member of the team start with the theme presenting his or her sticky notes related to that theme. Put these on a large foam core board, a wall, or whatever so that the whole team can see them. Then another team member adds their sticky notes that are related to that same thing. The next team member does the same. Then a second team member will suggest another theme, and so forth, until all the sticky notes are on the board. Even the outliers go on the board. Stick them around the edges. They may work their way in later. And they may serve as ins-, inspiration in some way you haven't anticipated. Do not ignore the outliers.

Now comes the big payoff. Identifying the insights that each cluster reveals. This is also one of the toughest parts of the process. Your participants have to move from a theme that has probably been more like a label, for example guilt or no time, which is easy to come up with. To an insight statement. An insight statement is more than just a word. Your participants have made observations. Now they must turn those observations into insights. They need to uncover what's implied by the observations. A good way to get this started is to ask, so what? You might need to ask, so what several times. Continue until meaningful insight statements emerge. For instance, guilt becomes people avoid thinking about their health, because it makes them uncomfortable to realize they are really in charge. Write the inside statements on large sticky notes and place them on top of the appropriate sticky note clusters. Then have the participants note the connections between and among the clusters for even better representation of what is. At this point, the mind map is technically complete. The design thinking mind mapping process, however is not complete. The pivot between what is and what if, is the generation of a design criteria statement. The topic of design criteria, an important project management aid, is covered in more depth elsewhere. But for now, just know that design criteria are the conditions your design solution must satisfy in order to solve your customer's problem. These are conditions based on the insights you've uncovered through your deep understanding of what is. For instance, your solution to the exercise problem, will have to be one that the user can easily fit into their day. Now, a compelling way to generate design criteria, is to ask yourself, if anything were possible, if anything were possible, what criteria would our new design meet. Once you have your design criteria in hand, you'll be ready to move on to thinking about possible solutions to your design challenge. Design criteria are the foundation of What if? Your team will have agreement regarding how to decide if a solution is good, but you won't have a solution in mind In What if, you'll focus on possibilities. I hope you can see how critical mind mapping is to the design thinking process. And how it can unleash creativity and intuition, that will serve you well throughout the rest of the process. And there I realized Mind Mapping is a whole lot of fun.

