MAPPING USER EXPERIENCES – FROM INSIGHT TO ACTION

Building a better mousetrap does not guarantee success anymore. Products and services are increasingly interconnected. Experience design is the new competitive advantage. The winners will be determined by how well their offerings fit with each other and how well they fit into people’s lives.
The use of systematic, visual representations exposes previously unseen opportunities for improvement and for growth. They contribute to a broader strategic conversation within organizations.

This workshop focuses on various ways to map experiences. Such maps are already widely used but have also have a certain degree of confusion around them. Jim offers a unique perspective from years of experience that will help you understand the practice.
Even if you’ve created diagrams in the past – e.g., customer journey maps, experience maps, service blueprints, etc. – you’ll be sure to learn something new in this course that you can apply immediately. Through hands-on exercises, you’ll be able to apply some of the principles in practice.

We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the way businesses create and capture value. But we are stuck in obsolete practices of management that optimize short-term gains to maximize shareholder prices at the expense of long-term shared value. Ultimately, this course will help you approach how to understand and manage the design of meaningful experiences.

All How to Web workshops consist of live sessions with the instructor delivered online, with no recorded materials, so you can discuss your problems and get your questions answered.

1st session, TBA (2h)
During the 1st live session, Jim will introduce you to mapping experiences and teach you how to initiate a diagramming project. After that, you will learn how to conduct research and create the map. The session will alternate lectures with practical exercises, feedback group discussions, and Q&A sessions.

2nd session, TBA (2h)
During the 2nd session, you will learn how to facilitate strategic workshops using experience maps and how to envision and plan future products and services. The session will alternate lectures with practical exercises, feedback group discussions, and Q&A sessions.

• Understand the strategic principles of value alignment
• Learn how to distinguish between different diagram types and select the most appropriate ones for your particular situation
• Learn how to facilitate meaningful conversations about creating value and informing strategic decisions in your organization

Jim Kalbach is a noted author, speaker, and instructor in design, customer experience, and strategy. He is currently Chief Evangelist at MURAL, the leading online whiteboard.

Previously, he worked in various design-related consulting roles for large companies, such as eBay, Audi, SONY, Elsevier Science, LexisNexis, and Citrix.

Jim is the author of three books: Designing Web Navigation (O’Reilly, 2007), Mapping Experiences (O’Reilly, 2016), and most recently The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (Rosenfeld, 2020). He is also the Co-founder and Principal at the JTBD Toolkit, an online resource with learning, training, and content.

An experience map is a visualization of an entire end-to-end experience that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal (normally agnostic of a specific business or product). It is used for understanding what motivates your customers – what their needs are, their hesitations, and concerns. Although most organizations are reasonably good at gathering data about their customers, data alone fails to communicate the frustrations and experiences the customer experienced. A story can do that more effectively, and one of the best storytelling tools in business is the user experience map.

The purpose of User Experience Mapping is to understand what customers go through and improve the quality of your customer experience, ensuring consistency and a seamless experience at all touchpoints and across all channels.

Some people in the field equate Experience Maps with Journey Maps, but they’re not quite the same. The Experience Maps it’s used for understanding a general human behavior, as opposed to a Customer Journey Map, which is more specific and focused on a product.