Nani Peroni   Design Thinking for Innovation Assignment      Challenge & Selection   In a previous role at a small business lending startup , I was responsible for the company ’s customer experience across   the entire journey . While a small company , our departments were siloed and employees focused on delivering the best   experience they could to customers in their roles ( sales , underwriting , collections , customer service , marketing ) but   were n’t aware of the full relationship a customer would have with the company . This lack of awareness impacted   customers as they shared in their feedback with us . In order to bring value in my role , I wanted to build a connecting   thread between these groups so that we could deliver a cohesive and differentiated experience for our customers . To   help bring transparency to the entire customer journey and foster collaboration to drive a better experience for our   customers , I decided to run a visualization exercise with business partners . My goal was to create a visual and interactive   journey with specific touchpoints that our customer has with each one of our businesses to encourage discussion   around how we can build a better and connected customer experience .      Application    I invited representatives from each of the customer facing businesses to a two hour visualization exercise where I placed   key customer interaction points on the wall of our conference room ( Awareness , Research and Consider , Apply , Repay ,   Return / Attrite ) to kick off the discussion . I provided colored post - it notes and pictures that represented channels , and   feelings . After walking the group through the intended goal for the session , we started talking through the different   customer stages and drawing touchpoints and feelings a customer would go through when interacting with the company   on post - its and paper .   The colored paper allowed us to differentiate between pain points and points of delight which   quickly made it evident how we were treating our customers holistically . After an hour , it was clear that many of the   people in the room were surprised at touchpoints happening earlier in the journey that had a downstream impact on   their interaction with the customer . ( Since our company was split between New York and Michigan , I ran the same   exercise in Michigan and was able to merge the two visual journeys into 1 holistic map in the NYC conference room ) . 

 A picture of our visual map halfway through our session . 

 Insight    The visualization exercise generated an interactive map of customer touchpoints , customer feelings , pain points , points   of delight , pictures of customer interaction , and drawings from the stakeholders that were simply an outcome of going   through the visualization of the customer journey .   I could sense that by seeing all of the touchpoints and possible   emotions our customers may go through built empathy for the customer and encouraged participants to collaborate and   discuss changes to their current processes that would create a better experience .   Aside from the colorful and illustrative   visual in our conference room that everyone in the NYC office was exposed to , we walked away from the exercise with a   better understanding of our customers and a roadmap of ideas that we implemented to create a seamless experience . 

 It was also interesting to hear feedback from the participants about the exercise . Many of them have never used the   visualization tool and enjoyed being able to draw pictures rather than write - up an explanation . As Angela Meyer   explained in her video during week one of the course , visualization “ allows us to access parts of our brain , parts of our   creativity , that we might not normally be using in the course of conversation . ”   Other than gaining new insights around   visualizing and mapping our customer journey across all touchpoints , I learned a lot about how different people take on   the task of visualization and that there is n’t one right way to approach design thinking . Some liked to draw and others   preferred to use different colors but everyone was thinking visually .     Approach   This was my first attempt using the visualization tool in a large setting . I ’ve practiced using the tool on my own to   brainstorm ideas and found tremendous value . Running it on a larger scale presented its own challenges ( e.g. gaining   buy in around the value of “ visual thinking ” and approaching a project from a completely new angle ) but overall believed   the exercise was successful . Being a very visual person , I really enjoy using this tool and am almost drawn to it   automatically when I think about solutions and ideas I have to approach a challenge .   When I decide to use this tool   again , I will consider asking the participants to think about the challenge and exercise visual thinking before coming   together as a group . Seeing the perspective others bring to the table before getting in a group think exercise can help   expand our boundaries of “ what is . ” 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: Nani Peroni
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: Nani Peroni   Design Thinking for Innovation Assignment      Challenge & Selection   In a previous role at a small business lending startup , I was responsible for the company ’s customer experience across   the entire journey . While a small company , our departments were siloed and employees focused on delivering the best   experience they could to customers in their roles ( sales , underwriting , collections , customer service , marketing ) but   were n’t aware of the full relationship a customer would have with the company . This lack of awareness impacted   customers as they shared in their feedback with us . In order to bring value in my role , I wanted to build a connecting   thread between these groups so that we could deliver a cohesive and differentiated experience for our customers . To   help bring transparency to the entire customer journey and foster collaboration to drive a better experience for our   customers , I decided to run a visualization exercise with business partners . My goal was to create a visual and interactive   journey with specific touchpoints that our customer has with each one of our businesses to encourage discussion   around how we can build a better and connected customer experience .      Application    I invited representatives from each of the customer facing businesses to a two hour visualization exercise where I placed   key customer interaction points on the wall of our conference room ( Awareness , Research and Consider , Apply , Repay ,   Return / Attrite ) to kick off the discussion . I provided colored post - it notes and pictures that represented channels , and   feelings . After walking the group through the intended goal for the session , we started talking through the different   customer stages and drawing touchpoints and feelings a customer would go through when interacting with the company   on post - its and paper .   The colored paper allowed us to differentiate between pain points and points of delight which   quickly made it evident how we were treating our customers holistically . After an hour , it was clear that many of the   people in the room were surprised at touchpoints happening earlier in the journey that had a downstream impact on   their interaction with the customer . ( Since our company was split between New York and Michigan , I ran the same   exercise in Michigan and was able to merge the two visual journeys into 1 holistic map in the NYC conference room ) . 

 A picture of our visual map halfway through our session . 

 Insight    The visualization exercise generated an interactive map of customer touchpoints , customer feelings , pain points , points   of delight , pictures of customer interaction , and drawings from the stakeholders that were simply an outcome of going   through the visualization of the customer journey .   I could sense that by seeing all of the touchpoints and possible   emotions our customers may go through built empathy for the customer and encouraged participants to collaborate and   discuss changes to their current processes that would create a better experience .   Aside from the colorful and illustrative   visual in our conference room that everyone in the NYC office was exposed to , we walked away from the exercise with a   better understanding of our customers and a roadmap of ideas that we implemented to create a seamless experience . 

 It was also interesting to hear feedback from the participants about the exercise . Many of them have never used the   visualization tool and enjoyed being able to draw pictures rather than write - up an explanation . As Angela Meyer   explained in her video during week one of the course , visualization “ allows us to access parts of our brain , parts of our   creativity , that we might not normally be using in the course of conversation . ”   Other than gaining new insights around   visualizing and mapping our customer journey across all touchpoints , I learned a lot about how different people take on   the task of visualization and that there is n’t one right way to approach design thinking . Some liked to draw and others   preferred to use different colors but everyone was thinking visually .     Approach   This was my first attempt using the visualization tool in a large setting . I ’ve practiced using the tool on my own to   brainstorm ideas and found tremendous value . Running it on a larger scale presented its own challenges ( e.g. gaining   buy in around the value of “ visual thinking ” and approaching a project from a completely new angle ) but overall believed   the exercise was successful . Being a very visual person , I really enjoy using this tool and am almost drawn to it   automatically when I think about solutions and ideas I have to approach a challenge .   When I decide to use this tool   again , I will consider asking the participants to think about the challenge and exercise visual thinking before coming   together as a group . Seeing the perspective others bring to the table before getting in a group think exercise can help   expand our boundaries of “ what is . ”
### Output: 