Reflection – Visualization

Challenge & Selection

I used the strategy of visualization to describe the confusing contents of one project. When I  was in the human resource department in a student organization, I was in charge of a new  program to support new members. Although I successfully generate the framework of the  program, I found it difficult to convey what it was like. My project was called “Seido,” the Neighbors Project in Japanese, which included a system of paring new members and  senior members to let each new member have an accessible supporter. Although I had to  differentiate my project from the mentor system, which had already existed in my organization,  I was always told that my program was a resemblance to it. Some of my colleagues said to me  that my program was unique and helpful, so I decided not to give up and changed the way I  explained my project.

To tackle this problem, I made use of the benefits of visualization. As Angela Myer said in her  video, visualization helps you to convey what you want to say to others without confusion. It  was difficult to differentiate the contents of my project, especially about the role of the  supporters, from that of the mentor system. While the mentors worked as advisors to help junior  members work on their tasks, the supporters in my project were defined as guides to make new  members familiar with my organization and have more psychological safety. I decided to use  images to depict this role of the supporters to the participants.

In addition, I believed that visualization was the best way to explain what the supporters actually  did as well. According to Myer, visualization is useful not only in ideation but also in  prototyping and pilot, which is the stage where I found the difficulty. Because I ran this project  basically by myself, it is unavoidable to make the supporters understand what they would do  and work on most of it by themselves. To realize this ideal situation, I tried to create a simple  instruction book. This book should minimize the number of questions from the supporters, so I  took advantage of visualization, including figures, lines, and color effects, instead of words  alone.

Application

First of all, I attached several images to the instruction I used. They depicted kind neighbors  talking with each other. I thought that the picture of neighbors was suitable to depict my project  supporters because they would work to make new members feel safe there in my organization.  If your neighbors are kind to you, you can feel comfortable living there. I tried to use this  psychological tendency to make the participants find the picture of my project supporters. One  of the participants told me that the images are helpful to understand my project and to find  differences from the mentor system.

Furthermore, I created the instruction book with visualization techniques. My instruction  explains what the supporters would do in order with figures, arrows, and lines. Color selection  helped me to highlight the important contents and to visually simplify the flow of the supporters’

tasks. It included more information or guide than just a wordy explanation, so I faced less  confusion than before. While I had explained it verbally to each of them, I finally managed to  save time to do so and focused on other management tasks.

Insight & Approach

Throughout this experience, I found that visualization is an efficient method to convey  information to others. Of course, it usually takes time to complete works with visualization  because creators or innovators need to consider how to represent what they want to say on their  whiteboards. Using visualization is not so simple as explaining with words. However, at the  same time, it saved a lot of time. Visualization is highly useful to make your instruction  understood precisely to others. Therefore, you do not have to be bothered with the confusion  caused by your verbal explanation and you can save time explaining your issue with words in  the first place. Visualization itself can complete a part of your work.

When I get the next opportunity to use visualization as an innovative strategy, I would like to  work on it with more people. Because I dealt with this challenge nearly by myself, my work  was based on my ideas, perhaps my biases or stereotypes. I think that visualization done by  multiple people is more powerful and effective because they can find and prevent biases of each  member. If I have a chance, I will discuss each member’s ideas and try to reach a universal  design, which everyone can understand.

