Data Flow Card | A New Tool that Tells a Story with Your Business Data
Do you organize design thinking or UX workshops? If so, how do you engage with participants?
In general, several tools and templates can be used for design thinking workshops and UX projects. Facilitators choose certain tools prior to workshops, as each tool plays a different role.
SAP Leonardo, for example, begins with an explore workshop, which we conduct to initiate the Design Thinking process. It helps us identify real problems that are of a high value to the customer. Different kinds of tools already exist in SAP Leonardo’s Design Led Development process, however, it’s always necessary for a project team to develop a tailored approach for each customer and their specific industry.
During our last few Leonardo engagements, my team — SAP Design at AppHaus Korea — had a chance to deliver projects for customers who asked SAP to transform their business with new technologies, such as IoT, Machine Learning, and Big Data. In the customer workshop, we applied a set of tools to uncover new opportunities, based on the customer’s business challenges.
Data Flow Card — Turning data into actionable insights
One of the tools we used was the ‘Data Flow Card,’ which our team developed from an existing visualization tool — SAP Scenes. Scenes is already a nice tool to visualize stories quickly- we simply added the Data Flow Card in order to also transform data into insights. The main purpose of the tool is to help participants envision how a new technology might fit into their use cases. It consists of 3 different cards: sense, analyze/predict, and outcome.
Each card represents different stages of information processing, from collecting data, to turning it into actionable insights:
- Sense — Data collected from specific channels and devices
- Analyze/ Predict — Key insights(e.g., real-time analytics, KPIs, trends, metrics, suggestion) from collected data
- Outcome — Business & user benefit due to intelligent analytics/ prediction
With this tool, both the participants and the Leonardo/ Design experts can discuss the value of data and information mapped for the selected use cases. Moreover, it prepares designers for next steps, so they can create initial prototypes after the workshop.
And, of course, the Data Flow Card itself can be tailored again, as we conduct other workshops. I hope this tool helps participants think about what to do with Big Data in their businesses.
To try our tool, download the Data Flow Card or use sticky notes.
Takeaway — Key considerations for using the tool
Are new tools always better? What should be considered when planning to create tools for a workshop? I would like to list just a few:
- Industry and customer context
- Time and budget available
- What you intend to do with the findings (e.g., will this drive design of a product, service or strategy?)
- Location of use
- Size — It shouldn’t overwhelm the participants with too many things
(Project team — Esther Lee, Joanne Bae, and Tay Kim)
Originally published at https://experience.sap.com.
