>> We have another video on the mind-mapping technique prepared for you by our very own Darton professor, Marian Moore. Let's take a minute and look at that now. >> Hi. I'm Marian Moore. I'm a marketing professor here at Darton and a colleague of Jean [INAUDIBLE]. I'm going to be talking to you today about one of the design tools called mind mapping. Mind mapping is one of the most powerful tools in the design thinker's toolbox. It's used to look for patterns, it's used to look for insights, that lead to more creative solutions to your design challenge. In the first phase of design thinking process, we take a look at the current reality. At what is. In doing so, we amass a huge amount of data. Before moving to the next phase, what if, we need to distill all that data into information and insights that can be easily communicated. This is just what mind mapping does well. At Darton, we use mind mapping with executives, students, steel-makers, educators, retailers, those are not-for-profit firms, government agencies, consumer package goods companies, and all will attest to its power. Here's the formal definition. Mind mapping is looking for patterns and insights in a large quantity of data you collected during your exploration of what is the current reality. The goal is to establish criteria for the what-if idea generation phase. Which comes next. This phase is pivotal in the design thinking process. Mind mapping provides a segway from what is to what if. Mind mapping is an engaging alternative to that giant report we might otherwise have written to sum up and communicate in prose and charts and spreadsheets. All that your team uncovered. And we have to hope that somebody read the giant report that we generated. Mind mapping is more intuitive. It's more creative. It's more visual, and it's more engaging. David Kelley, the founder of IDEO said, when I want to do something analytical, I make a list. When I'm trying to do something creative, I make a mind-map. That said, let's be clear what we don't mean by mind-mapping and the design-thinking process. You're probably familiar with a mind map. You're probably familiar with one that looks something like this. This is actually one I drew to show my faculty colleagues how the marketing concepts and frame works by covering the executive education program fit together. It shows which concepts are more important. Which concepts are connected to which. It's very visual. Note, however, it's a representation of my mind, the process of creating it involved only me. In design thinking we use the mind mapping process to capture and represent the minds of our customers. That's minds, minds, of our customers. We involve our colleagues in order to develop a common mind among them regarding the current reality of a design challenge. Through mind mapping, we extract meaning from data in a way that lets patterns and insights emerge. Patterns and insights we might otherwise have missed, as we sorted piecemeal through the data, to generate that report I mentioned. The end result will look similar to the mind map on the previous slide. But the design thinking process of generating the map, deliberately involves many stakeholders. Now let's take a look at the creative intuitive process of mind-mapping. Remember, though, we're not looking for an answer to our design challenge at this point or even possible answers. We're still in what is. The transition from what is to what if, is design criteria, not a design. In their book, Designing for Growth, Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie set out the mind mapping process step, by step. They used the metaphor of a yard sale or an art gallery for the initial steps. The idea being that you have a lot of stuff, and you want to present it to other people. And a yard sale or an art gallery are a great way to do that. Trust them. It works. I'll identify the steps quickly, and then we'll cover a few of them in more detail. Step one is to decide to hold the yard sale. Then you invite some shoppers or gallery-goers to attend the sale or view the gallery. You offer tours of the sale or the gallery, letting your guests wander through at their own pace. Nothing what appeals to them. Your guests can in teams, to discuss what appealed to them and to group similar items. Then the team identifies insight to get translate it into design criteria. So I've lots of items for your yard sale or your gallery. You'll have information that your team gathered from sorts of sources to bring the current reality to light. You may have some customer diaries, you may have some ethnographic interview results. You may have some formal quantitative data, in fact you'll probably have a lot of formal quantitative data, charts, graphs, etcetera. You may even have some really creative output your consumers generated using projective techniques. Find a space, a conference room, a hall way, cafeteria, any space that will allow people to wander comfortably. Make large posters, enlarge the pictures, spread the stuff around, so the folks can view it all, as they walk through the gallery. You may or may not want to organize the pieces, just setting up the gallery, in fact is a great exercise for you and your team, as you sort through the huge mass of data that you have. Then you gather a group of shoppers or gallery goers. These should be people who are stake holders, people who are interested in the design challenge or problem you are working to solve. Tell them you need their intuition for a day or even just an afternoon. You should have at least ten people, but you can have as many as 50, depending on the space you have. By the way, Mind Mapping is a great way to align the organization around a common understanding of the current reality. This can be a big help as you move forward in the design process. Equip each gallery-goer with a clipboard, a bold marker, and a bunch of medium-sized sticky notes. Ask them to browse through the gallery on their own, with or without talking to one another. Ask them to pick out the good stuff. That is, ask them to note on separate sticky notes any item they believe might inform new ideas. Now be sure you've reminded them of the design challenge so they have that mind as they browse. Ask them to take note of what fits, as well as what doesn't fit. Sometimes the good stuff is what appears to be an outlier. Allow at least 30 minutes for this step. After the participants have viewed the gallery, ask them to return to the workshop room, arranging themselves at tables of five to six participants each. Before they start to share their good stuff, give them about ten minutes to review their own sticky notes and group them into themed clusters on their clipboard. Then the sharing starts. Have one member of the team start with the theme presenting his or her sticky notes related to that theme. Put these on a large foam core board, a wall, or whatever so that the whole team can see them. Then another team member adds their sticky notes that are related to that same thing. The next team member does the same. Then a second team member will suggest another theme, and so forth, until all the sticky notes are on the board. Yes. Even the outliers go on the board. Stick them around the edges. They may work their way in later. And they may serve as ins-, inspiration in some way you haven't anticipated. Do not ignore the outliers. Now comes the big payoff. Identifying the insights that each cluster reveals. This is also one of the toughest parts of the process. Your participants have to move from a theme that has probably been more like a label, for example guilt or no time, which is easy to come up with. To an insight statement. An insight statement is more than just a word. Your participants have made observations. Now they must turn those observations into insights. They need to uncover what's implied by the observations. A good way to get this started is to ask, so what? You might need to ask, so what several times. Continue until meaningful insight statements emerge. For instance, guilt becomes people avoid thinking about their health, because it makes them uncomfortable to realize they are really in charge. No time becomes people can't see how to work an exercise routine into their daily lives. Write the inside statements on large sticky notes and place them on top of the appropriate sticky note clusters. Then have the participants note the connections between and among the clusters for even better representation of what is. At this point, the mind map is technically complete. The design thinking mind mapping process, however is not complete. The pivot between what is and what if, is the generation of a design criteria statement. The topic of design criteria, an important project management aid, is covered in more depth elsewhere. But for now, just know that design criteria are the conditions your design solution must satisfy in order to solve your customer's problem. These are conditions based on the insights you've uncovered through your deep understanding of what is. For instance, your solution to the exercise problem, will have to be one that the user can easily fit into their day. Now, a compelling way to generate design criteria, is to ask yourself, if anything were possible, if anything were possible, what criteria would our new design meet. Once you have your design criteria in hand, you'll be ready to move on to thinking about possible solutions to your design challenge. Design criteria are the foundation of What if? Your team will have agreement regarding how to decide if a solution is good, but you won't have a solution in mind In What if, you'll focus on possibilities. I hope you can see how critical mind mapping is to the design thinking process. And how it can unleash creativity and intuition, that will serve you well throughout the rest of the process. And mind mapping can be a lot of fun.
