Mapping the Customer Journey

Imagine you're planning a trip to a new city. You probably wouldn't just jump on a plane and wing it - you'd do some research first, right? The same principle applies when you are trying to understand your customers. You shouldn't try to engage with customers without understanding their journey.

Customer journey mapping is all about figuring out what your customers are thinking and feeling at each step of their journey with your business. It's a way of putting yourself in your customer's shoes and seeing things from their perspective.

Figure 1. What is it?

Figure 2. An Example

Figure 3. Touchpoints on the Customer Journey

Figure 4. Digital and Analogue Touchpoints

Figure 5. Journey Mapping

Figure 6. Touchpoint Design

Figure 7. Creating your own Customer Journey Map

Quietly Brilliant: Design Thinking for Introverts

Despite what many practitioners of design thinking may say, collaboration and group brainstorming are not normal behaviours for many. Design Thinking requires confidence in our own creative capabilities and prompt us to exhibit a playfulness and extroversion that may be unsettling at first. This can be particularly acute for introverts who may find group collaboration, of the kind advocated by design thinking, deeply uncomfortable. A secondary issue is that people are often simply embarrassed to attempt to do something creative, having been discouraged from such behaviours in school and at work. To some, sketching on a whiteboard, or simply suggesting an idea, may seem as terrifying as having to sing in public.

Whether you are merely a sceptic, lack creative confidence, or the thought of brainstorming in a crowded room fills you with terror, there is positive news. Studies have shown that online brainstorming, the likes of which have become most popular during the Covid-19 pandemic, are often more effective than face-to-face interactions. Tools such as Miro, Mural and Figma allow remote teams to brainstorm remotely. My own experience has shown that students who are sometimes reluctant to engage in the classroom, are often highly engaged on collaborative platforms such as Miro. For those who feel more confident in a private setting, individual brainstorming exercises have also been shown to be highly effective for idea generation.  Design prompts and Crazy 8s are an excellent starting point.  For the applied group research and development project, on our MSc Design and Development Digital course, we encourage students to engage in solo ideation before joining in group ideation exercises. It means all students have an opportunity to flex their creative muscles without getting drowned out by the loudest voice.

Susan Cain’s excellent book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, should be mandatory reading for introverts and extroverts alike. Susan describes how society is modelled on an “Extrovert Ideal” that both misunderstands and undervalues introverts. Introverts are often sensitive, thoughtful and skilled observers. Introverts also place a premium on establishing rich meaningful connections. Such qualities make them ideal candidates for UX research and design thinking which places an emphasis on empathising with users. Margaret Hagan, Executive Director of the Legal Design Lab and lecturer at Stanford Law School, suggests some tips for supporting introverts: giving space, not pushing into the spotlight and designating time for both personal work and public sharing time.

Analytical Thinking, Intuitive Thinking...Design Thinking

Roger Martin in his book “The Design of Business” describes how some companies protect themselves from the randomness of intuitive thinking. Companies that adopt this analytical thinking approach, attempt to replace instinct and gut feeling with quantitative data and rigorous analysis. This is sometimes the case in universities too, where students are taught to question assumptions and plan for the future by critically analysing the past. Best practice is often favoured over next practice.

An alternative “intuitive thinking” approach places an emphasis on creativity and human ingenuity above all else. The inability to systemise and routinise best practice means that organisations adopting this approach find it difficult to achieve economies of scale.

Neither singular approach is enough. Design thinking organisations, argues Martin, are those that can bridge the seemingly irreconcilable nature of intuitive and analytical thinking. I would argue that graduates who can effortlessly cycle between intuitive and analytical thinking modes are similarly unstoppable.

How Coca Cola Uses Service Design

Nice short video explaining how Coca Cola uses Service Design internally

Service Design at Coca-Cola GBS from Michal Steckiw on Vimeo.

Frog Design: Collective Action Toolkit

The Collective Action Toolkit from Frog Design, puts design thinking tools in the hands of non-designers with the aim of allowing communities to come up with tangible solutions to real world problems.  Similar in vain to IDEO's Human-Centered Design for Social Innovation,  the kit encapsulates Frog Design's take on design thinking in an effective, fun, and practical manner. More information about the kit and the download here. 

Design Thinking Gets Serious about ROI

Design Thinking (DT) has received quite a bit of press in mainstream business publications over the last couple of years. The narrative, for the most part, has been very positive. Conversely, there has been a number of pragmatic attempts to temper some of the wide-eyed optimism by discussing the importance of results-driven DT. In a previous article I referred to ROI as the elephant in the room. As design thinking and service design begins to gain traction amongst the C-Suite, there has been, and will continue to be, a renewed focus on metrics. For all the anecdotal success stores and “soft benefits”, metrics are the “hard” currency of the board room. At the 2013 Global Service Design Conference, Lee Sankey, Director of Design at Barclays, asked “Is Service Design more in love with process than outcomes?”. This was not meant as a criticism of service design. Rather, it was delivered as a challenge to service designers. Do they wish to be defined by service design outcomes or the service design process? 

Of course, talk of results-based DT is not entirely new. The Strategic Decision Group (SDG) at Stanford have demonstrated how analytical tools such as tornado charts can be used to quantify the value of design. However,  the renewed focus on DT outcomes is a welcome development as it signals DT's move from niche to mainstream. Dr. Susan Weinschenk of Human Factors International has discussed the ROI of User Experience and the Design Council have also done great work in discussing the impact evaluation of service design efforts.  

I recently attended a presentation by Justin Ferrell of Stanford's famed d.school. Though  the d.school has traditionally eschewed research in favour of practice, Justin mentioned that the d.school have recently begun to look for empirical evidence for the success of DT. Ironically, nobody asked them to do this before d.school became wildly successful. I suppose it was inevitable given the growth of DT and the burgeoning cottage industry that has sprung up around it. 

Creative Confidence and Design Thinking for Introverts

I've been teaching design thinking methods to university students since 2010. Consequently, I've had a little time to reflect about what works and what doesn't. One of the first thing that jumps to mind is that students are often reluctant to dive in to design thinking methods.  Despite what many practitioners of DT may say, collaboration and group brainstorming are not normal behaviours for many. It can force one to challenge deeply held beliefs about how one thinks and makes decisions. As a result, there is often a temptation to fall back on traditional analytical thinking approaches i.e. doing what is comfortable. Sometimes I will see students attempt to solve problems and then reverse engineer it to make it look that they applied a Design Thinking approach. Some students even go to the trouble of staging photographs of brainstorming sessions! This is not because the techniques don't work, it's because the tools are so challenging to what we know and hold dear! DT requires a certain confidence in our own creative capabilities and also requires us to exhibit a playfulness and extroversion that may be unsettling at first.

I think there are two main issues here. Firstly, some people are introverted and find group collaboration, of the kind advocated by design thinking, deeply uncomfortable. The second issue, is that people are often simply embarrassed to attempt to do something creative, having been discouraged from such behaviours in school and at work. 

The d.Schools Fellow Margaret Hagan has created a great infographic dealing with "Design for Introverts" which illustrates a few ground rules for engaging introverts in the design process, while David and Tom Kelley's brilliant book Creative Confidence should also be required reading for anybody who questions their ability to innovate.  Most of us have lost the playfulness and creative abilities that we were born with. David and Tom's book show us how to gain it back. 

by Andrew Pope

Image Courtesy of Margaret Hagan @ d.School

Towards a Design-Led IBM

IBM becomes the latest company to embrace design thinking in an effort to further bolster their efforts to become a design-led company. As a stalwart of innovation, and early practitioner of "Innovation Jams", IBM's investment in design thinking is a massive endorsement of the effectiveness of design thinking. 

Welcome to Google Garage

Having a dedicated space for innovation is an important part of the design thinking process. This video courtesy of Fast Co. brings viewers inside Google's Garage, a collaborative workspace/hackspace that enables Google employees to work on "crazy, creative ideas". 

Rotman Dean Roger Martin on Design Thinking

Roger Martin's book "The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage" is still one of the best Design Thinking books available. Here Martin provides a concise description of Design Thinking and why it matters to business. For a more comprehensive discussion on the intersection of business and design please watch the full documentary "Design the New Business".