Example Reflection – Visualization Challenge & Selection

I have started working on a challenge in hand through visual thinking, to understand the problem better i  have interacted multiple customers and patients who are having issues in continuing therapy of one of an  expense medicines in a self-pay market where there is no insurance or funding from government is  available. Before proceeding further I have used strawman visualization technique to identify real pain  points and potential solution by interviewing diverse patients and doctors with set group of questions that  allowed me to identify the root cause of problem and how solving this problem will make doctors and  patients job easier

Application: I start the process by drawing patient and Doctors (Customer) journey on white board to  understand it and explain it to other team members. we then divided the team members in 2 groups one  who will work to identify challenges in the journey of those doctors whose patients are dropping out early  in the treatment, they were given sticky note and a white board where they started marking the stage of  journey where patients stopped taking treatment. While on the other hand there was the second group  who was given a task to identify what could be potential motivational factors that can help patients to  continue their therapy.

After visualization and drawing the patient journey and drop out challenge and motivational factors in  continuing the treatment. We conducted a rigorous data analysis of past 2 years to measure adherence to  therapy rate and from there we shortlisted patients and their physicians who dropped out during first year  of therapy. From here we conducted multiple rounds of interviews with previously shortlisted doctors and  patients. We also conducted similar sort of interview with doctors having their patient continuing their  therapy since start.

Insight & Approach

What our team has learned from this exercise that understanding of problem is the most critical part and  the kind of insight we gathered during this visualization stage will set the right direction towards finding  the right solution of the problem. Another important aspect we learned is evolution of this visualization  through retrospective data analyzed that not only explained the current patient journey but also helped to  identify the real problem. For future probably will work on visualization from the very beginning instead of  jumping to pain point directly based on the information available in hand only.

