Peer Graded Assignment – Mind Mapping (Module 3)

Challenge & Selection     I am the President of a student organization organizing events, workshop and real case  projects for students. We just entered a new market with our organization. As we entered a  new market, we don’t much about our audience (the students) and our market (who is our  competition and what are they offering). The goal of our first year in this market is to have  new offerings, and preferably something that is not being offered yet by our competitors.     Thus, our main goal is to discover what students are looking for in activities of organizations  and what their unarticulated needs are. Therefore, we used the Mind mapping tool. As we  have been active in other cities, we have a lot of data about what students prefer and what  the attendance was at each of these events. Mind mapping will allow us to look for patterns  and insights in those data sets. We want to have something visual, engaging to discuss our  possibilities. All of these insights can then be clustered together so we can sum up our findings  and come up with new activities which will meet the student’s unarticulated needs.       Application     We started this by structuring our data, per type of events/workshops/projects. We looked  at our data and we created visual personas, to get an idea of who our typical ‘customers’ are  and what their typical characteristics are. For example, one of the outcomes was that  finance students preferred hands-on workshops where there was an opportunity to network  with speakers and of course finance related keynote events. We had about 7 to 8 different  personas which gave us a great insight in our audience.     We then looked more at our data and we tried to visualize it and cluster it per different  categories. We then tried to find correlations and tried to link those (visually) to get a better  understanding of our data. We noted our findings on post-its and tried to cluster these. We  all noted down our own findings separately so we wouldn’t be influenced by each other.  Afterwards we discussed our findings and clustered them.     Out of these personas and clustered insights we created some possible events & workshops  and tried to link them with our findings and personas. This visual way of working gave us a  great overview of all our possibilities we had in this new market. As this was visual and very  clear it also gave us the opportunity to validate our ideas really quickly with our potential  customers. This way of working, iterating between ideation and validation gave us a really  strong idea about what could work best.

Insight & approach    What I learned most is that making this visual is a very important aspect. Once you visualize  it, it becomes much clearer and makes it easier to have a discussion about it. It also allows  you to validate your ideas in the market.     Working with lots of data makes it difficult to get insights out of it. Visualizing this data helps  a lot in this.     I think for this ideation phase working with the mind mapping tool is one of the best tools.  As this is a very visual tool and allows you to be more creative and more engaging in the  discussion.


Peer Graded Assignment – Mind Mapping ( Module 3 ) Challenge & Selection I am the President of a student organization organizing events , workshop and real case projects for students . We just entered a new market with our organization . As we entered a new market , we do n’t much about our audience ( the students ) and our market ( who is our competition and what are they offering ) . The goal of our first year in this market is to have new offerings , and preferably something that is not being offered yet by our competitors . Thus , our main goal is to discover what students are looking for in activities of organizations and what their unarticulated needs are . Therefore , we used the Mind mapping tool . As we have been active in other cities , we have a lot of data about what students prefer and what the attendance was at each of these events . Mind mapping will allow us to look for patterns and insights in those data sets . We want to have something visual , engaging to discuss our possibilities . All of these insights can then be clustered together so we can sum up our findings and come up with new activities which will meet the student ’s unarticulated needs . Application We started this by structuring our data , per type of events / workshops / projects . We looked at our data and we created visual personas , to get an idea of who our typical ‘ customers ’ are and what their typical characteristics are . For example , one of the outcomes was that finance students preferred hands - on workshops where there was an opportunity to network with speakers and of course finance related keynote events . We had about 7 to 8 different personas which gave us a great insight in our audience . We then looked more at our data and we tried to visualize it and cluster it per different categories . We then tried to find correlations and tried to link those ( visually ) to get a better understanding of our data . We noted our findings on post - its and tried to cluster these . We all noted down our own findings separately so we would n’t be influenced by each other . Afterwards we discussed our findings and clustered them . Out of these personas and clustered insights we created some possible events & workshops and tried to link them with our findings and personas . This visual way of working gave us a great overview of all our possibilities we had in this new market . As this was visual and very clear it also gave us the opportunity to validate our ideas really quickly with our potential customers . This way of working , iterating between ideation and validation gave us a really strong idea about what could work best . Insight & approach What I learned most is that making this visual is a very important aspect . Once you visualize it , it becomes much clearer and makes it easier to have a discussion about it . It also allows you to validate your ideas in the market . Working with lots of data makes it difficult to get insights out of it . Visualizing this data helps a lot in this . I think for this ideation phase working with the mind mapping tool is one of the best tools . As this is a very visual tool and allows you to be more creative and more engaging in the discussion .