VISUALIZATION TO TRANSFORM LIVES 

 Diana Alfonso – Engineer / Researcher 

 Colombia 

 Challenge 

 I work in a huge research program in my country , Colombia , regarding the development of   renewable energy to be used in the country by 2030 . The program is divided in ten different   projects , I collaborate as a researcher in one of the projects that is related to the costumer   challenges within the adoption of these new technologies we are researching . We as   researchers , tend to be very quantitative so we first started with a marketplace research and   used only tools that were entirely related to the data we had and , because our team is mostly   compounded with engineers , they were oddly satisfied with the results of this first outlook of   the market . Yet , here is the challenge : The technologies that are being developed are ( because   many scientific reasons ) being designed to be used in country ’s poorest zones , tending also to   transform lives and environments , so in the first marketplace research we did , we found that the   new technologies were indeed going to help this poor regions ( quantitatively ) . But , there ’s a   deeper challenge we did n’t notice : we did n’t really know our costumer , we did n’t gave a deep   thought about the fact that we were going to disrupt many communities way of living that have   had almost none contact with technology at all , and that they were n’t going be able to use it or   even understand it once they were installing it . So , we needed to study our market and costumer   in a deeper way , but this time using a different approach . 

 Selection 

 This time , the objective was to get to know our customers and help them get an insight on what   is coming in their communities . We chose to use visualization , not as a tool to represent what we   wanted the community to do with the technology but rather to explain to them and see how   they imagined and reflected in the things we wanted to do . Since I learnt about it , I have always   thought that visualization is a very powerful tool mostly in a co - creation processes because both   the company and the client must have the same visualization of the product so they can both   achieve their goals and satisfy their needs . But I think in this case , co - creation is not about a   product but instead about building an image together . We get to know our customer , how they   see themselves in these coming changes and everything that comes along , and they get to   understand the technologies and the way they are going to change their lives . 

 Application 

 We set up an interdisciplinary team to decide which communities we were going to visit and how   we were going to do it . We decided to make a social workshop . At first , there was interaction   between social workers and the community and then the engineers prepared an intervention   when they explained very easily the concept of energy and all the changes the government was   going to start bringing to these zones . At this point , we proceeded with the greater part of the   workshop with was direct work with the community , we gave material so they could express 

 creatively how they see themselves and how they thought this was going to change their lives .   The participation varied from children to older people and the acceptation was very positive .   Visualization was very helpful in both sides , we as engineers learned a lot about all the   communities we visited and researched our marketplace in a way we were not used . This stage   took us about three months to visit and work with communities and then other months getting   deeper into the results and constructing something very positive about our new market   research . 

 Insight 

 We gained a lot of insights . Most importantly , we discovered that people in the communities see   this project very positively , first because they feel back up from the government and also   because through renewable energies we are going to be able to give them some dignity , starting   by something as basic as drinkable water . Also , we learned a lot about the things we needed to   help them adapt into this new life . 

 I can not really write about our research results because they are in a publication process . Yet , I   really want to say that Design Thinking tools and approach in general is the most valuable thing   I have learned in the last few years , because our mindset is always about data and as engineers   changing our fixed mindset to a learning mindset brings so much new information and so many   ways to understand the context of our work . 

 Approach 

 I would not really change anything from our approach and if we were to repeat this activity , I   would use the same tools because the findings were amazing . You could say that qualitative and   mixed research has always existed , and it is true , however you can access to a much deeper and   innovative insights by using design thinking tools . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: Diana Alfonso
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: VISUALIZATION TO TRANSFORM LIVES 

 Diana Alfonso – Engineer / Researcher 

 Colombia 

 Challenge 

 I work in a huge research program in my country , Colombia , regarding the development of   renewable energy to be used in the country by 2030 . The program is divided in ten different   projects , I collaborate as a researcher in one of the projects that is related to the costumer   challenges within the adoption of these new technologies we are researching . We as   researchers , tend to be very quantitative so we first started with a marketplace research and   used only tools that were entirely related to the data we had and , because our team is mostly   compounded with engineers , they were oddly satisfied with the results of this first outlook of   the market . Yet , here is the challenge : The technologies that are being developed are ( because   many scientific reasons ) being designed to be used in country ’s poorest zones , tending also to   transform lives and environments , so in the first marketplace research we did , we found that the   new technologies were indeed going to help this poor regions ( quantitatively ) . But , there ’s a   deeper challenge we did n’t notice : we did n’t really know our costumer , we did n’t gave a deep   thought about the fact that we were going to disrupt many communities way of living that have   had almost none contact with technology at all , and that they were n’t going be able to use it or   even understand it once they were installing it . So , we needed to study our market and costumer   in a deeper way , but this time using a different approach . 

 Selection 

 This time , the objective was to get to know our customers and help them get an insight on what   is coming in their communities . We chose to use visualization , not as a tool to represent what we   wanted the community to do with the technology but rather to explain to them and see how   they imagined and reflected in the things we wanted to do . Since I learnt about it , I have always   thought that visualization is a very powerful tool mostly in a co - creation processes because both   the company and the client must have the same visualization of the product so they can both   achieve their goals and satisfy their needs . But I think in this case , co - creation is not about a   product but instead about building an image together . We get to know our customer , how they   see themselves in these coming changes and everything that comes along , and they get to   understand the technologies and the way they are going to change their lives . 

 Application 

 We set up an interdisciplinary team to decide which communities we were going to visit and how   we were going to do it . We decided to make a social workshop . At first , there was interaction   between social workers and the community and then the engineers prepared an intervention   when they explained very easily the concept of energy and all the changes the government was   going to start bringing to these zones . At this point , we proceeded with the greater part of the   workshop with was direct work with the community , we gave material so they could express 

 creatively how they see themselves and how they thought this was going to change their lives .   The participation varied from children to older people and the acceptation was very positive .   Visualization was very helpful in both sides , we as engineers learned a lot about all the   communities we visited and researched our marketplace in a way we were not used . This stage   took us about three months to visit and work with communities and then other months getting   deeper into the results and constructing something very positive about our new market   research . 

 Insight 

 We gained a lot of insights . Most importantly , we discovered that people in the communities see   this project very positively , first because they feel back up from the government and also   because through renewable energies we are going to be able to give them some dignity , starting   by something as basic as drinkable water . Also , we learned a lot about the things we needed to   help them adapt into this new life . 

 I can not really write about our research results because they are in a publication process . Yet , I   really want to say that Design Thinking tools and approach in general is the most valuable thing   I have learned in the last few years , because our mindset is always about data and as engineers   changing our fixed mindset to a learning mindset brings so much new information and so many   ways to understand the context of our work . 

 Approach 

 I would not really change anything from our approach and if we were to repeat this activity , I   would use the same tools because the findings were amazing . You could say that qualitative and   mixed research has always existed , and it is true , however you can access to a much deeper and   innovative insights by using design thinking tools .
### Output: 