Reflection: Visualization

Challenge:

The challenge at hand was to optimize the discussions we had as partners who were running a  fairly small scale ecommerce business. To be more specific, it was apparent to us that we were  not on the same page when it came to which products we ought to sell or the amounts in which  we should purchase these items from the wholesalers. As the budget we had was always strictly  limited, we needed to choose items very wisely since one wrong decision would mean roughly  zero profits and moreover, high risk of irreversible loss in the particular month.

Selection:

The tool that I chose to apply and talk about is the tool of Visualization. I utilized visualization to  consolidate and present my views and the relevant supporting data in a neat manner that is easy  to swallow. I used parallelly placed flowcharts that illustrated the data points in a simple manner.  Each flowchart was based on one of the partner’s suggestions and hence having all of them side  by side enabled us to really look at the situation from a ‘big picture’ perspective. One could easily  see the point the other was trying to make and fusing certain ideas was easier since the whole  process was divided into chunks or blocks that could conveniently be picked up and placed into  another flowchart. Details such as the importance of any block could be easily highlighted and  discussed and unnecessary bits could be discarded without disrupting the entire process since  one could clearly see the relationship between said elements.

Application:

The process began by simply gathering data. A list was created of the 50 most sold items on  various sites such as Alibaba where we usually source our inventory from. Using basic web  scraping, we grabbed information regarding the items that were currently popular. After this  collection of data, we calculate the overall popularity of items across the sites by merging the lists  and then creating a new overall top 50 list. Similarly, such lists were also created focusing on  other parameters or metrics such as the estimated projection of profit we could expect from a  particular item or product by comparing the selling price on our source sites and the price our  competitors were currently offering the item at. This too was done utilizing simple web scraping.

Based on this resultant data sheets, the partner would pour through the information individually  and try to come up with the best distribution of products they can come up with that they believe  would fetch us maximum profits. The entire process for each of the distribution would be  represented using exhaustive flow charts that described the entire flow in blocks or chunks.  These also included the final investment amount we would require to pay and the projected  revenue and profit we could hope to gain by following a certain distribution. Since the suggestion  were clearly based on concrete data, the number of arguments that occurred decreased sharply.  The partners felt a sense of security knowing that the final decisions taken were fairly safe bets  and this motivated them to work more diligently through the entire execution of the process.

Insight:

A few facts have become extremely clear to me after I used the tool as discussed. Human beings  are visual creature in the sense they rely heavily on the visual part of things as compared to  other senses. Therefore, things get very much more convenient when people can ‘see’ things  precisely the way you want them to. In most cases, due to the fact that we as internally picture  things differently as per our own intellect, understanding, past experiences, etc. there is almost

always a significant loss of information during communication due to this translation. Therefore, it  makes complete sense to use visualization to try to push the ideas or points across as effectively  and efficiently as possible. This improved clarity of the matter at hand leads to idea stimulation in  the right direction due to decrease in unnecessary confusion as everyone is somewhat on the  same page. Visualization is a core component of how communication takes place; we capture  complex things, picture the results and come up with new possibilities that would otherwise  remain hidden from us.

Approach:

I am quite fascinated by how well things unfolded after we chose to use visualization. Our profits  increased by an average of 9.7 percent in the last three months, and I am certain it will increase  further as we grow and sharpen our process further. In the future I will try and apply the tool of  mind mapping as I think that is quite closely related to visualization and will give us better overall  results. As we learned in this course, mind mapping is known to be a really powerful tool a  design thinker has access to. I understand that it shall help we look for patterns and extract  meaningful insights so that I can come up with more effective solutions.

