For this reflection I have chosen to look back on a challenge faced during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of design thinking . 

 Challenge 

 In April 2020 , the COVID-19 pandemic had forced the world into a global lockdown . Governments around the world looked into solutions to complex problems in how to contain the spread of the virus , but also , how to safely reopen society . As an advisor to one of Canada ’s leading behavioural science think tanks , I was asked to join a global expert advisory panel to assess the idea of a Covid tracing application to help better inform the population about their risk of infection and ways to limit exposure to others . Our panel was specifically tasked in assessing the risks associated with the usage of such an application . This presented us with a significant challenge since the problem was a   “ wicked ” one , with no previous data to base ourselves on , and very limited consensus across stakeholders : government officials , public policy experts , technology experts , and the software engineers developing the solution . 

 Selection 

 It was clear to us that in order to assess risk , we needed to achieve a consensus of the facts . However , with limited data to work on , and many perspectives at play in this cross - functional group , we needed to begin by “ level setting ” everyone on what the facts were . We chose to use visualization as a tool to achieve this objective . Visualization itself is , essentially , to think in a nonverbal way by “ visualizing ” the problem in our minds : in this case , specifically by asking our stakeholders to visualize the relationship between the application itself and its prospective users . We understood that visualization would allow us to provide each stakeholder with the opportunity to look at the relationship between the application and its user in a new way , and possibly to uncover additional risks that they had not considered either through its usage , or its outcomes . Our goal was that through this exercise we would be able to compile a much more complete , and robust , set of information that would allow us to have a more informed position for the rest of our mandate . 

 Approach 

 To achieve this we set up the following exercise for our stakeholders : 

 1 . We set - up a virtual conference in which we explained who we were and the mandate we were presented with , we then explained why we had asked everyone to participate in the conference and what we hoped to achieve through the exercise we were about the present them with ; 

 2 . We split the group by stakeholder type ; 

 3 . We now provided the group with an on - screen image of a generic user and asked the groups to add virtual sticky notes around the on - screen user of any number of potential ways the application could be used by the user and how those uses could generate risks ; 

 4 . Once the group was satisfied with their responses we asked them to then evaluate the potential impact each risk would have on the user and society as a whole should they occur by scoring each one from 1 to “ n ” , where 1 was had the highest impact and “ n ” had the lowest ; 

 5 . We then asked the stakeholders to again repeat the evaluation process , but this time by evaluating , from their perspective , how likely they anticipated each risk to actually occur , 1 being most likely and “ n ” being least likely . 

 Insight 

 This exercise provided our team with all of the information we needed , in the form of 4 distinct matrices , to then complete our own assessment of the reality of the potential risks this new product would pose to the target users and society more generally . I can not discuss what our official conclusions were , but I can say that we were able to assess the sustainability of the application from a “ social capital ” implication and provided our detailed findings , including a formal recommendation to our respective governments . At the time we never discussed our approach in specific “ design thinking ” details . However , looking back now , I can see that we applied a lot of the core components of visualization in order to solve the specific challenge presented by the wicked problem facing us . Visualization allowed us to bring a cross - functional team of experts , with varying perspectives on the problem / solution , and help find the closest expression of what the reality of the situation was through rich , informative data in the form of a matrix . 

 Approach 

 What we specifically found , was that there were a number of surprises in just how large of a gap there was between the varying perspectives ( in the form of how they visualized the associated risks to users , but also in how they ranked them ) which we likely would have never been able to qualify and quantify through a more generalized interview , group discussion , or literature review . In fact , some of the responses came as a complete surprise to some of the stakeholders themselves ! In the end , we were able to demystify a complex problem through the use of visualization . In the future , I anticipate applying a similar approach when faced with such a wicked problem , but it may not be the exact use case for more simple problems , in these cases I may opt to use a different version of the visualization exercise itself , or opt for more of an in - depth interview with a small sample of the target users directly . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: For this reflection I have chosen to look back on a challenge faced during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of design thinking . 

 Challenge 

 In April 2020 , the COVID-19 pandemic had forced the world into a global lockdown . Governments around the world looked into solutions to complex problems in how to contain the spread of the virus , but also , how to safely reopen society . As an advisor to one of Canada ’s leading behavioural science think tanks , I was asked to join a global expert advisory panel to assess the idea of a Covid tracing application to help better inform the population about their risk of infection and ways to limit exposure to others . Our panel was specifically tasked in assessing the risks associated with the usage of such an application . This presented us with a significant challenge since the problem was a   “ wicked ” one , with no previous data to base ourselves on , and very limited consensus across stakeholders : government officials , public policy experts , technology experts , and the software engineers developing the solution . 

 Selection 

 It was clear to us that in order to assess risk , we needed to achieve a consensus of the facts . However , with limited data to work on , and many perspectives at play in this cross - functional group , we needed to begin by “ level setting ” everyone on what the facts were . We chose to use visualization as a tool to achieve this objective . Visualization itself is , essentially , to think in a nonverbal way by “ visualizing ” the problem in our minds : in this case , specifically by asking our stakeholders to visualize the relationship between the application itself and its prospective users . We understood that visualization would allow us to provide each stakeholder with the opportunity to look at the relationship between the application and its user in a new way , and possibly to uncover additional risks that they had not considered either through its usage , or its outcomes . Our goal was that through this exercise we would be able to compile a much more complete , and robust , set of information that would allow us to have a more informed position for the rest of our mandate . 

 Approach 

 To achieve this we set up the following exercise for our stakeholders : 

 1 . We set - up a virtual conference in which we explained who we were and the mandate we were presented with , we then explained why we had asked everyone to participate in the conference and what we hoped to achieve through the exercise we were about the present them with ; 

 2 . We split the group by stakeholder type ; 

 3 . We now provided the group with an on - screen image of a generic user and asked the groups to add virtual sticky notes around the on - screen user of any number of potential ways the application could be used by the user and how those uses could generate risks ; 

 4 . Once the group was satisfied with their responses we asked them to then evaluate the potential impact each risk would have on the user and society as a whole should they occur by scoring each one from 1 to “ n ” , where 1 was had the highest impact and “ n ” had the lowest ; 

 5 . We then asked the stakeholders to again repeat the evaluation process , but this time by evaluating , from their perspective , how likely they anticipated each risk to actually occur , 1 being most likely and “ n ” being least likely . 

 Insight 

 This exercise provided our team with all of the information we needed , in the form of 4 distinct matrices , to then complete our own assessment of the reality of the potential risks this new product would pose to the target users and society more generally . I can not discuss what our official conclusions were , but I can say that we were able to assess the sustainability of the application from a “ social capital ” implication and provided our detailed findings , including a formal recommendation to our respective governments . At the time we never discussed our approach in specific “ design thinking ” details . However , looking back now , I can see that we applied a lot of the core components of visualization in order to solve the specific challenge presented by the wicked problem facing us . Visualization allowed us to bring a cross - functional team of experts , with varying perspectives on the problem / solution , and help find the closest expression of what the reality of the situation was through rich , informative data in the form of a matrix . 

 Approach 

 What we specifically found , was that there were a number of surprises in just how large of a gap there was between the varying perspectives ( in the form of how they visualized the associated risks to users , but also in how they ranked them ) which we likely would have never been able to qualify and quantify through a more generalized interview , group discussion , or literature review . In fact , some of the responses came as a complete surprise to some of the stakeholders themselves ! In the end , we were able to demystify a complex problem through the use of visualization . In the future , I anticipate applying a similar approach when faced with such a wicked problem , but it may not be the exact use case for more simple problems , in these cases I may opt to use a different version of the visualization exercise itself , or opt for more of an in - depth interview with a small sample of the target users directly .
### Output: 