Visual Thinking Strategies in User Experience

Abstract

Understanding the perspectives of other people is a common goal in the field of user experience (UX), but it is not a guaranteed experience. The design thinking process aims to generate a lot of ideas and possible solutions to a problem at hand. This paper discusses the state of psychological safety for participants and team members in a UX setting and a design thinking process. This study measured the psychological safety of UX participants who participated in a facilitated discussion method called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). This study will inform the creation of a VTS module to be used in special topics courses for the Interaction Design and Information Architecture (IDIA) master’s program. The IDIA program at the University of Baltimore is the most relevant program to the UX field. In this study, seven UX participants experienced a VTS discussion. After the VTS discussion, participants were given a questionnaire and asked to rate their experience, including how comfortable they felt sharing ideas during the discussion. While not statistically significant, quantitative and qualitative results in the study suggest that the VTS discussion was favorable and would be recommended to others UX professionals and students.