Focus Setting
To help understand and document the concerns of stakeholders, an affinity diagraming exercise was conducted at the initial kick-off meeting in January. Time and travel constraints kept the CMU and GE teams from being able to schedule a traditional focus setting meeting; instead the focus setting activity was distributed throughout the four hour meeting which included technical demonstrations and presentations. During the presentations and discussions everyone present wrote down any concerns, constraints, observations, questions and ideas that was raised on Post-it notes and set them aside. At the end of the meeting these notes were discussed and organized.
Rob Mayer (GE) explaining an idea.
Immediately after the kick-off meeting, the CMU team finished organizing the Post-its into an affinity diagram.
CMU team creating an affinity diagram
Informed by the affinity process, the team brainstormed individually to produce three areas that they believed were the most important to guide future research. The output was a set of concerns, which were discussed at length, organized, and narrowed down to three distinct focus statements:
- Understanding the flow of information between roles of interest
- Understanding how data is used to make an accurate diagnosis
- Understanding the inefficiencies, in terms of time and physical effort in the diagnostic process
Results of Focus Setting / Affinity Diagraming