improving communication between research team and stakeholders

“Information mapping for kick-off workshops”

Improving communication between project teams and stakeholders

When project teams convey the research results and ideas to stakeholders inside the organization, but outside the team, e.g., the sales people, they often meet difficulties and misunderstandings in communications. This project aims to develop a deep understanding of the way researchers communicate with their stakeholders. Based on the research results, concepts and prototypes are developed to improve the information sharing between researchers and their stakeholders.

Graduation project 2012.01-2012.11


The project starts with a main research question: How to support communications between research team and its stakeholders in Philips? The whole project process is divided into four parts. 1 In the research phase, the case study is conducted with aid of relevant literature research. Problems of communication and wishes of target users are identified. Based on the case study conclusions, directions are formulated and selected by discussions with employees.

2 In the idearation phase, ideas are generated and selected, and then they are integrated into one initial concept. Later the initial concept is developed through three rounds iterations. Draft prototypes are tested with both researchers and clients. Then they are upgraded after each round iteration. With insights from target users, the initial concept is upgraded into final concept.

3 In the design phase, the author details the final concept and makes final prototypes, which are divided into three parts. Firslty, a stop motion animation is made. Secondly, four sets of inspiration cards are manufactured. Finally, the workshop guidance is created.

4 An evaluation session in the final phase is conducted to test the design outcomes and several suggestions for future development are concluded.


Research Case study: What elements influence communications between a research team and its stakeholders in terms of knowledge sharing?

A case study is conducted to gain a deep understanding about the elements affecting communication between researchers and stakeholders. The participants are four members in research team and their direct client from business side. The client is one of the most important stakeholders in the project team. The case study is divided into three parts, aiming to obtain insights from their “say”, “do” to “think”.

The interviews are transcribed. To quickly extract the key points from the data, a session is executed. Five user researchers read the transcription, write down their interpretations on interesting quotes and group them into several topics (see the right figure). After the session, the author continues the data analysis. Similar topics are combined and the relationships between them are defined. The data categorization leads to the study results and user needs and wishes are extracted from results.


The case study results are clarified into seven topics: knowledge differences, interest differences, role of stakeholders, goal of information transfer, routine of customer meeting, objects in use and negotiation for resources (see the upside figure). All these topics influence information transfer between the research team and stakeholders.

The case study results are visually presented with infographics. The figure illustrates the infographic "the role of stakeholders".

Study Results


With the case study results, users’ demands and wishes are extracted and generated into eight design directions. Then they are mapped in the left diagram according to two criteria: access to resources and relevance. Direction that both makes use of most research results and needs no confidential resources is selected (as it is stated in the blue circle):

Design a tool to support information transfer by improving the researchers’ awareness of four topics: stakeholder relationships, preferences on communication, expectation differences and knowledge backgrounds.

Design direction

IdearationBased on the design direction, the author conducts a self brainstorming and a creative session involving five design students for idea exploration. Ten ideas are selected (see the downside figure) and evaluated with researchers from company Philips. Then the author integrates them into one initial concept.

In order to make the final concept more practical, the design requires more insights input from researchers and clients through user centered iterations. Thus the author conducts three rounds iterations and upgrades the initial concept to final concept.


Final concept

To improve research team and clients’ awareness of the four topics which are important to team communication, i.e. stakeholder relationships, preferences on communication, expectation difference and knowledge backgrounds, a kick-off workshop involving research team and clients is designed with three main tasks for information mapping. Correspondingly, three tools are designed to support these tasks respectively.

DesignIntroduction movie

The introduction movie is a paper-cut stop motion animation. It is divided into three parts. Firstly, the issue of communication between researcher team and clients is introduced as well as the four important aspects. Secondly, the effect of each topic is explained in detail and the solution of mapping information out in the project start is proposed. Finally, the four topics are emphasized in the conclusion. Moreover, the participants are encouraged to try the inspiration cards and guidance in the workshop.

The movie can be watched online: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDk4NjU5NDg4.html

Firstly, the importance of four elements is structured in their mind and an introduction movie is designed to refresh participants’ thoughts on the four topics.

Secondly, a brainstorming on the four topics is conducted. A set of inspiration magnet cards are developed for brainstorming on each topic.

Thirdly, ideas on the four topics are shared and mapped out together. Guidance is made to instruct the participants to go through each step of the kick-off workshop.


A set of inspiration cards is designed to facilitate the brainstorming on each topic respectively. On each card, there is one keyword and a short expatiation. The keyword aims to inspire the participants quickly and the explanation is prepared for reading in detail if there is a need. Besides, the cards are decorated with background images, which help to inspire the participants and make the mapping activity more fun at the same time.

Inspiration cards

There are over 70 magnet cards in total for the four topics, and it is easy to mix them up together. To prevent the chaos, four paperboard packages are designed for the topics respectively. The topic names are printed on the package. Thus it is convenient for the participants to find the set of cards they need in the brainstorming.

The cards are made of magnet material because they can be easily attracted and moved on the whiteboard, which is frequently used in client meetings. Each card is 75 millimeter by 75 millimeter, which is comfortable to pick up by hand. The keyword is readable when the card is 3 meters away and the explanation can be read easily when it is two meters away.


To support quick start of the workshop and instruct the participants to go through the steps, a paper instruction of the information mapping workshop is designed (see the right figure). It provides concise illustrations of the kick-off workshop. In addition, four video tutorials are developed to provide guidance on mapping the four topics respectively. Moreover, to assist the facilitator for workshop preparation and provide detailed explanations to people who are interested in this workshop design, a guidance booklet is developed (see the figure below).

Guidance

To test the final design and prototypes on use experience and usability aspects, an evaluation session is planned and carried out with a research team as participants. Besides that, the final design is piloted with three customer teams. Generally, the evaluation results are positive. The net promoter score is 55. In addition, suggestions for further development are concluded. The introduction movie is a little bit too long. The magnet cards are attractive and inspiring, but there are risks that participants stick to the cards and forget about other elements. Besides, the video guidance contains too much information and it is hard to concentrate.

Evaluation

improving communication between research team and stakeholders

Documents