Prototyping assignment. Sam, graduate, business consultant needs a way to find activities that she enjoys and advance her learning & career.

1. Stakeholder:
Sam, 23 years old Chinese national, living in the UK for the past 5 years, MSc and BSc
from UK universities, business consultant for one of the Big Fours.
Studied piano and achieved highest level certification for amateur pianists in China
Beautiful, tall, confident, ambitious, funny
Problem Statement:
23yo Chinese national with BSc and MSc from UK Universities, living in London, tall,
beautiful, sensitive, intelligent NEEDS TO develop professionally; find meaningful
projects & activities with her employer or outside BECAUSE her work does not reflect
her values, it is not challenging intellectually and she gets very unhappy.
Idea:
write every day for 6 weeks what you like every day, what you dislike and what you
would like to do. At the end, read all and take action.
#DTActionLab #Sam #consulting #values #map #self-awareness

2. Prototype:
• Consulting work varies from day to day: you work with different people, your
assignment can change from one day to the next, you are asked to work on
projects at client site and for the practice development as well.
• My prototype tries to develop a way of monitoring the activities & people
interaction against Sam’s stated values:
– Helping people and organizations
– Flexible work
– Creative work
• I would ask Sam to map each combination of activity and new group of people
against three axes as described in the next slide.
• Timing: every day for the first 3 weeks with every change of activity &
people/team.

3. Help People
& Organizations
- +
-
+
Activity/People/Learning
x
x
x
Notes:
1. Activity:………………………….
…………………………………………….
2. People:…………………………..
…………………………………………….
3. Learning…………………………
…………………………………………….
4. Value – Helping People &
Organizations
…………………………………………….
…………………………………………….
…………………………………………….
5. Other Observations:
6. Date & Time

4. Flexible work
- +
-
+
Activity/People/Learning
x
x
x
Notes:
1. Activity:………………………….
…………………………………………….
2. People:…………………………..
…………………………………………….
3. Learning…………………………
…………………………………………….
4. Value – Flexible Work
…………………………………………….
…………………………………………….
…………………………………………….
5. Other Observations:
6. Date & Time

5. Creative work
- +
-
+
Activity/People/Learning
x
x
x
Notes:
1. Activity:………………………….
…………………………………………….
2. People:…………………………..
…………………………………………….
3. Learning…………………………
…………………………………………….
4. Value – Flexible Work
…………………………………………….
…………………………………………….
…………………………………………….
5. Other Observations:
6. Date & Time

6. • Sam should use this tool regularly in order to
understand which types of activities and types
of people give her a positive experience
aligned to her stated values.
• She might discover other values important to
her which she was not aware of.
• The tool should enable her to formulate clear
goals and plan her next move in order to have
a more fulfilling learning and working
experience.

7. What worked
IdeasQuestions?
What could be improved
• Simplicity
• Easy to implement just with pen &paper
• Quickly delivers information/insight
• One view which would allow you to see
all values matched against
activities/people/learning
• A view which would allow you to see
trends/most liked/most disliked

8. Reflection
a. What you learned by testing your prototypes;
- Not everybody’s mind functions like mine. While it is easy for me to plot dots on
this mental map, it is not Sam’s way of structuring her thoughts.
- She was happy to adopt this method for chartering her working experience =>
completely new perspectives could give us insight into our behaviour/situation.
b. What you would do next if you were to continue working on the project.
• I would like to have more time to test the prototype with a variety of individuals
and get their feedback regarding easiness of use, what they liked/disliked, if they
would add anything, etc. I would also like to know if they discovered anything new
abut themselves and what would they recommend to others using the same tool.
• I would like to write a very simple intuitive how to guide
• After testing with a significant number of people I would develop an app.