Reflection – Visualization

Challenge

I was tasked with helping one of our departments with re-imagining how they accomplish their work.   Their caseload had increased dramatically over the past few years, but there wasn’t budget for  additional staff, and consequently, they were falling further and further behind.  Our goal was to find  ways for them to change how they worked so they could handle the increasing caseload without adding  staff positions.  I was responsible facilitating the project and one of my first tasks was to collect  information about the current state, including feedback and insights from staff, so that our small team  who would participate in the ideation session could start from a shared understanding.  I used  visualization throughout the project at many different steps, but in this reflection, I’ll discuss here how I  used it to define the problems and create a shared understanding of the current state.

Selection

I was an outsider to the group who was there only to facilitate and organize the efforts, so I had to get  up to speed on their work processes very quickly.  This wasn’t easy.  The department had lots of detailed  procedures, but nothing that connected those procedures into a bigger picture of workflow.  Also, they  used lots of jargon to describe their work and also had confusing naming conventions where the same  word or phrase could refer to multiple parts of the process.  It was difficult to understand their thoughts  and feedback with all the confusion about “vocabulary.”   To make sure that the staff and I, and  eventually the small team who would participate in ideation sessions, could be confident that we were  all on the same page during our conversations, I decided to use a visualization tool.  Visualization allows  us to align our understanding with others because a single visual picture grounds us in the same  understanding in a way that words do not.  In particular, I created a process diagram of  current state  and used it as a tool in my conversations with staff.

Application

First, I conducted 2-3 interviews with the team managers and reviewed existing procedure and training  documentation to draft a process diagram for the current state.  The diagram included each major step  of the process.  I indicated via symbols whether the step involved working with physical materials or  electronic materials.  I showed which roles were involved at each step by using color-coded stick figures.   Once I had created this high-level process, I conducted additional interviews with staff using a series of  specific open-ended questions.  Those questions were 1) how well does this diagram represent the  current process and what, if anything, should be changed on it, 2) which parts of the current process do  you think create the most problems and why, 3) which parts of the current process do you think work  well and why, and 4) what else do you want the team working on this project to know.  As we went  through the interviews, I had them to write their thoughts on the process flow (each person had their  own copy) and encouraged them to use symbols like happy/sad faces or stars or question marks to  capture their feedback.  Using visualization to ground and structure these conversations was extremely  effective for me.  I was able to be confident that I understood exactly which steps and parts of the

process the staff was talking about when they provided feedback and that my understanding of the  current state wasn’t confused by difficult jargon or confusing naming conventions.

Insight

Not only did visualization help me create shared understanding, it also provided other benefits.  It was  extremely efficient.  After instituting the process map in my interviews, the quality of the conversation  was richer and the interviews actually took less time.  Additionally, I had artifacts from the interviews  that directly recorded staff’s thoughts and opinions that I could go back to reference later and that I  could share with others so they could see first-hand feedback.  Finally, I was able to easily find patterns  in the feedback and to communicate them to the small team that would participate in the sessions to  ideate changes and improvements.  All of this led to better conversations and ideating in the next step  because we had a solid basis of understanding to start from.  While this project wasn’t designed using a  Design Thinking approach specifically, I realize now that many of the most effective techniques that I  used, like visualization, are included in Design Thinking.

Approach

If I were to do a project like this again, I would definitely use Design Thinking more deliberately.  While I  think that the use of the process diagram for gathering information about as-is was useful, I do wonder  if it might have constrained some of the thinking about the challenge space.  Because we were grounded  in a visualization of process, we talked mostly about process.  It could have been helpful to spend some  time thinking about the people involved in the process from a more human-centered approach.   Visualization could have been helpful here too.  Also, we produced a rather large briefing packet for the  group that participated in ideation.  If I were to do this process again, I might consider using the mind- mapping technique instead of the large briefing book.  I think we would have had more engagement in  the early part of our ideation sessions and potentially some more creative ideas.

