How to facilitate an experience mapping workshop James Kalbach Align: Designing Value

I’m lucky: for a majority of my career I’ve had the fortune to come in direct contact with the customers of the companies I worked for. I’ve observed hundreds of people at their workplaces or in retail stores or in their homes, across many industries. I’ve observed what they experience in context.

Ideally, everyone in an organization would get firsthand contact with customers. But for many this type of exposure is limited. Even frontline personnel, such as customer support center agents, may only see a few of the experiences customers have. Anecdotes come in without context, like notes in a bottle washed up on shore.

A broader picture is needed in order to connect the dots. Diagrams provide such a view. But creating a diagram is not the ultimate goal. Rather, it is a means to engage others in your organization in a discourse. It’s your job to make this discourse happen. Consequently, your role switches from mapmaker to facilitator at this point in the process.

This lesson describes the main components of an alignment workshop, a primary event to bring others together. The session has three parts:

• Empathize:

Gain an outside-in view of the individual’s experience

• Envision:

Imagine a future that provides meaningful value

• Evaluate:

Articulate ideas quickly and test them for immediate feedback

You won’t come out of the workshop with fully fleshed-out concepts ready to implement. In a final step, you’ll plan experiments. Test your hypotheses and measure outcomes in the weeks that follow.

The overall process is illustrated in Figure 1-1.

By the end of this lesson, you should have a clear understanding of how to use a diagram to engage stakeholders and to chart a course forward.

Figure 1-1. The main parts of an alignment workshop are to empathize, envision, evaluate, and plan experiments. Empathize

It’s not enough that you empathize with the experiences people have. You need to ensure that others gain that same deep understanding. Strive to spread empathy throughout the organization.

Empathy is about seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. It’s about an implicit sense of what an experience is like, what people value, and what emotions are involved. Diagrams allow you to walk through an experience in slow motion, helping to create empathy within your organization.

The process begins by first understanding the current experiences. Then, assess how well you support those experiences before finally finding opportunities to create unique value.

Understand

To begin the workshop, review the findings from your investigation together as a group. Make the diagram the focal point. Complement it with other artifacts you’ve created, such as personas.

You can also play video clips from interviews to highlight a specific state of mind or pain point. Or, have co-researchers tell stories from the field that bring the experience to life. Portray a rich description of the world as you’ve observed it in a way that is relevant to the organization.

After setting the stage, have the group engage with the diagram. Display it prominently so a group of people can stand around it (Figure 1-2). Alternatively, place it flat on a table for the team to gather around. This has the advantage of offering the chance to sit but still be part of the workshop.

The aim is to immerse the team in the details of the experience by examining the diagram together. If there are many sections to the diagram, break the team up and have each group read through a different part.