On the occasion of our next training with Paul Kahn on the Mapping Experience (March 4-5, 2019), we return to this essential technique for the development of a solid, pragmatic and unique User Experience.
The User Experience is at the heart of the customer relationship. It is therefore not for nothing that User Experience Design reconciles user needs and business objectives. Nevertheless, many companies are still struggling to meet this challenge, sometimes limited by their internal processes, other times constrained by their organizational model... They then focus on their product or service while minimizing the strategic importance of the role of their end customers.
Lived experience as a strategy
Jim Kalbach, in his book “Mapping Experiences” and in this article presents the UX Mapping technique. Visualizing the experience of users (customers) allows you to focus on opportunities for innovation and growth by aligning your strategy with the customer experience using alignment diagrams.
“An industry starts with the customer and their needs, not with a patent, a raw material or a business skill. Given the needs of customers, the industry develops backwards, focusing first on customer satisfaction. Then it comes back to creating the things through which those satisfactions are partly realized.”
– Theodore Levitt Marketing myopia. 1960
Thus, this approach should not be limited to illustrating the User Experience but to identifying and understanding its critical moments. The different UX maps (customer journey maps, experience maps, service blueprints, mental models, etc.) are therefore only means and not ends in themselves.
Thus, the precise understanding of the users is essential. Indeed, it is not a question of inventing, supposing or interpreting anything but of basing oneself on real data resulting from interviews, observations, tests... To do this, the collection and user research synthesis must be rigorous and thorough.
Several visual representations make it possible to illustrate this information and share it with the entire organization. These alignment diagrams are then essential supports upstream of ideation workshops.
A user-centric approach
How to visualize the current customer experience as a whole?
How then is it possible to gain height? How to measure the impact of the organization on the customer relationship? What are the possible synergies between organizational changes and customer expectations?
Cartographic techniques offer strategic contributions by enabling value creation at two levels:
- for the customers
- for organizations
Among the most popular methods of UX Mapping, we find: the Customer Journey Map and the Service Blueprint.
Customer Journey Mapping: definition
A Customer Journey Map is a visual representation of the journey that a user, prospect or customer has in order to achieve a goal. This illustrates user motivations by detailing their needs and frustrations.
Understanding user motivations thus makes it possible to check, for each point of contact, the consistency between their expectations and actions and the product or services offered. It is therefore important to carry out this work over the entire customer life cycle.
Service blueprint: definition & method
The blueprint service is a method derived from Service Design. Following the logic of alignment diagrams, user actions are separated from organizational processes by an interaction line. This represents the different points of contact between customers and the company and therefore all the opportunities for creating value.
This complete representation of the User Experience allows stakeholders to consider the journeys as a whole and the different actors and/or services impacted. Thus, the customer journey map is an excellent starting point for a service blueprint.
To learn more
Finally, if you want to learn more about these user experience mapping techniques, Paul Kahn, an expert on the subject, will lead a UX-Republic training on March 4 and 5, 2019 at our premises in Paris.
Register now.
Alexandre, UX Designer @UX-Republic
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