Visual Thinking vs. Design Thinking in Digital Transformation

Design requires an ability to articulate and reflect, both are greatly assisted by visualization.

Fundamentally, design is a creative process of turning imagination into reality. The forward-thinking leaders understand how things like design thinking can fundamentally change organizations and make societal impact. To digitizing businesses, the overall design of the organization that matures itself requires very deliberate thoughts and actions, much like all stages of the business life cycle. Design Thinking turns out to be a discipline with strategic, cultural, personal implications, to make change delightful and solve critical problems radically.

The picture is worth a thousand words, visual thinking is a critical step in design: The environment is constantly changing, forcing the business to re-imagine and adjust. Business leaders today need to envision and share their perspectives on digital transformation with vast stakeholders of the companies, leverage their “sense and sensitivity” to visualize the large scale of changes by looking forward, looking ahead and being proactively looking for opportunities to improve, redesign organizational structure and reinvent business continually.

Visualization practices help digital leaders envision a big picture with information-based insight and ecosystem viewpoints to lead a smooth digital transformation at the right pace. Business executives today need to keep in touch with organizational partners, customers and varying stakeholders based on a continuous fashion to head off the bigger issues, get a holistic view of the organization and management team from an outside-in look, design a comprehensive business transformation scenario and take step-by-step change actions.

Design requires an ability to articulate and reflect, both are greatly assisted by visualization: Successful organizations see changes coming, visualize its impact, and reach design point with pre-planning and architectural framing. Re-imagining the future of business is exciting, but investigating the different path for unlocking business potential needs to leverage design thinking and take a systematic approach.

It is important to develop visualization methods which can leverage multi-factors in discovering patterns or hidden meanings. There is a big challenge to develop visual thinking skills, the ability to see object-relationships morphing through space-time, as well as the ability to see the "gaps" between object relationships and map these into the future. You have to be able to interpret and draw a conclusion based on what you are visualizing and that often comes down to being taught how to interpret what you are seeing. Design requires an ability to articulate and reflect, both are greatly assisted by visualization. The goal is to run a meaningful business by solving the current problem with design thinking mindset and ensure the business prosperity with long term perspectives.

Visualize user experience, design and develop an experience that fits them and their needs or desires: Digital is the age of people, empathy, and option, user experience is the key differentiator and an important strategy for the business’s long-term profitability and success. When you really understand or attempt to capture the insight about the customer actually want, that is when you can really design and develop an experience that fits them and their needs or desires. First, visualize "customer experience," and then, a valid strategic objective and the strategy mapping allow you to understand your customers and what they value, and then, identify how to best characterize that value. 

Visualizing user experience enables the business designing and bringing highly innovative solutions that meet customers’ needs, foster better ways the application can perform and optimize every touch point of user experience. The next practice is to live as "customers," point out that customer inquiries are not just support related, customer-facing applications are critical at the end of the day as they generate revenue for the business. The exceptional customer experience offers the “WOW” concept as the necessary success factor to ensure you stay ahead of the game, particularly with your peers in business.

Visualizing change inspires imagination and enforces communication. Achieving visibility of digital transformation provides a pathway into process optimization and business case justification. It’s also important to leverage Design Thinking for producing valid business solutions and exploring the art of the possible. It helps leaders become more future-oriented and discover the path to where you need to go and be persuasive to lead others toward the right direction and reach the destination confidently.

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