Visualization

Change & Selection

I think that visualization is a good tool for forming equal views in groups. My  challenge was to get a group of 6 together and shape it into a team, which has the  same understanding about several tasks we had to solve. One of these tasks was to  transform an old canteen into a new, modern coworking space which is used by  employees and also workers who usually work with their hands on tools. In the future,  the coworking space should promote networking between the employees and be a  meeting point for transferring know-how between people. For this task our CEO  chose me and 6 other employees from very different departments and hierarchy  levels. So at the beginning, everyone had different goals and views which had to be  combined to one single Question. So I had to use a visualization method to get the  same understanding for everyone. When someone explains an issue to a group,  often there is a different understanding of the case, because everyone receives the  words differently. With the usage of visualization tools, the people use ears and eyes  to understand the issue.

Application

I used a flipchart with several areas on it for visualization. At first, I started with the  task our CEO send to us and wrote it, summarized into three words onto the center of  the chart. After everyone had explained their understanding of the task to the group, I  began to write down the points allocated around the center task and connected it with  the center task. After that I circled the same words in everyone’s statement so the  commonalities got visible. These were the keywords everyone understood in the  task. And with them we were able to formulate a task we all agreed on.

Insight & Approach

After this experience I learned that visualization is an efficient tool that helps to create  a common understanding in groups and I will use it for further situations. I really  noticed, when people see the opinions from the rest of the group they will form a  common statement and be more purposeful.

I won’t do something different in that case, but nevertheless I will try a lot of other  tools which design thinking offers.

