UXPA Boston 2018: Interactive Journey Maps (Jen Briselli)

Presented by Jen Briselli (MadPow)

• Specifically, making journey maps interactive
• Tools, platforms, methods, tutorials out there… but what’s right for our project/client/need?
  • no one singular solution
  • we make deliverables from scratch, to serve our needs best

Some definitions

Maps

• Maps do a lot of things
  • Where are we?
  • Where do we want to go?
  • What’s the route to get there?
  • How do we navigate along the way?
    • Track my path, give me feedback
• …but interactivity helps maps do those things better.

“Journey maps”

• At its most basic: some kind of visual artifact that illustrates a path or journey
  • A user, customer and steps/actions/experiences over time
  • Then layered with other information…
    • Thoughts, emotations, qualitative experience
    • What channels? Touchpoints? Interactions?
    • Behind-the-scenes operational/employee actions?
    • Data/infrastructure/algorithms
• Can show both current-state as well as future-state

“Interactivity”

• Does not mean “just make something digital”
  • e.g. first wave of newspapers going online
• Adding an interactive component enhances it, helps make meaning, increase understanding, draws relationships/connections

Two examples

Financial customer experience

• Financial company wanted to reenvision entire customer experience
• End-to-end experience research, strategy, and design, including…
  • Internal stakeholder research
  • Customer & employee interviews
  • Generated design principles to guide future phases
  • Behavioral archetypes (vs. traditional personas)
  • Core concepts, key moments in ideal experience
• How do we incorporate all that into the customer’s end-to-end journey?
• Journey map included…
  • Experience steps
  • Digital “front-of-house” elements
  • People-based “front-of-house” elements
  • Technical “backstage” implications
• Iterated internally… it was huge: a 40-foot journey map!
  • In 2018, stuff is complex!
  • But size makes it hard to use… posted on wall internally, and with client during collaborative sessions
  • In large meeting, it’s OK, but when it’s done, can’t make it a simple poster
• So… make it interactive!

An linear, interactive journey map

• Not super fancy, but useful!
• Not just a “static PDF” of the giant map
• Allow people to jump from phase to phase, section to section
  • Not always one path, more like choose-your-own-adventure
• Includes enhanced content… highlight big opportunities to improve customer experience
  • Link to additional detail, sketches, prototypes, recommendations
• Pull your research into the strategy deliverable, so it doesn’t languish in a research report
  • Provide rationale for an experience right there in the interactive map
• Zoom in to look more closely on what you’re interested in
  • Executive can socialize the vision with the birds-eye-view
  • Designer can zoom in on detail for each component

Health experience ecosystem

• Evaluate an existing “health experience ecosystem”… chronic condition (like asthma), align all data swimming around us
  • Devices, weather
  • Put it together to serve the patient, help them manage condition
• Started with an “ecosystem” map from client… but just a list of parts… very little meaning/connections
• The more we mapped relationships, we realized we need to see in context of a dynamic (non-linear) journey
  • Chronic condition management is ongoing, no end
  • Shift between equilibrium, and being knocked-out of equilibrium

An circular, interactive journey map

• How do we create a “circular journey”?
  • Even more critical to make it interactive! Where are the potential opportunities to intervene for patient?
• Started with an ugly early draft on paper, then made it interactive
  • Started with an introduction, an onboarding experience, to understand what they’re looking at
  • Tool is pretty esoteric… so start with an interactive story
  • Start with patient…
    • then data sources around patient…
    • then where interpretation of data takes place…
    • outer layer is customer experience
      • circular
      • includes highlights of key moments/opportunities
• When you click on a key moment, it highlights the related layers/data in the rest of the map
  • Links out to deep dive with recommendations, additional design deliverables

Lessons

Can

• Improve usability of artifact that has a lot of dense information
• Provide unified UX vision to distributed/remote team
• Better highlight (and back up) key opportunities right in context of vision/journey
• Adapt to a customized format that better captures experience and resonates with internal teams
• Scalable, editable, living design
• Tie recommendations to research artifacts/media

Cannot

• Skip ahead to interactive journey map, without research/strategy process behind it
• Overcome lack of integration with internal teams

Practical tips

• Don’t need fancy tools and software, can do with team and tools you have in house
  • Also, risk that bespoke tool will limit how you implement, decrease your ability to innovate around format
• Provide multiple levels of detail
  • Designers need detail
  • Developers need summary vision
  • Leadership need clear/actionable recommendations
• Think about use cases…
  • Make easier to navigate
  • Access by remote teams
  • Access to details
  • Visualize relationships
• The tool is a UX project in itself
  • Build time into your process to…
    • sketch
    • collaborate with other designers, developers
    • evaluate with target audiences & iterate!
• Think about the content…
  • Figure it out first, then design the map
  • Don’t “design the airplane as you fly”
• Don’t skip research/strategy phases
• Seek collaboration from stakeholders for buy-in
• Think twice! Not right if…
  • you’re a small team with short-term goals
  • you’re only mapping status quo
  • you’re creating an internal artifact with short shelf life
  • you don’t have multiple layers of information to share