Puppy Chow Experience Map

This is usually the deliverable for the very first step of my design process, both for completely new products and for redesigns. I typically run a 1-3 hour long workshop with a team of people well placed to provide context for the target user / customer population, have them go through an extensive brainstorming and whiteboarding session, collect and aggregate all of their thoughts on post its, and then perform any additional user research, interviews, and contextual inquiry, if deemed necessary.

What you see attached is the output - a customer or user journey that provides internal and external context at all known stages of the target customer or user's relationship with the product. What are they doing, thinking, feeling? Where are these things happening? How are they taking place? When?

It's a superb tool for product roadmapping, customer experience, and user acquisition / retention / growth.

The next step for me is applying the business context in silos beneath the user's, so that a full but not necessarily complete picture of the service offering can be put forth - the service blueprint.

None of these ideas are originally my own - credit to Adaptive Path and live|work.