Backpacking in design thinking

Since the beginning of April I started this awesome new journey called Hyper Island. At this school I am following the course Experience Design whereI will be educated in design thinking, human experienced design and business strategy. We will learn about how designers think, how to conduct qualitative research, gain insights from (target) audiences and how to approach a client briefing with a business mindset (i.e.,instead of a creative, problem-solving approach). The experience with between B.Amsterdam, BSSA & Hyper Island started with design thinking and [we learned that] one of the key elements of designing a concept as an experience is how to create a customer journey map. Although relatively new to me, in my opinion this is one of the big steps in developing and delivering the prototype and final concept in design thinking. The customer journey mapping is the route or map that will guide the user through your concept and defines how they can use it.’

The relation between customer journey mapping and design thinking is about two things. In the first place, customer journey mapping starts within companies, organisations or brands when there is a problem, the problem-solvers are trying to tackle the problem and identify how and why the problem is occurring. Identifying the problem can be solved at the start by creating multiple kinds of customer journey maps. In the second place, organisations, companies and brands can come up with new opportunities or can be willing to step into new fields. Within this case, customer journey mapping starts when the insight are gathered, ideas are generated and prototypes are being tested. During our case on Greenpeace (for #BSSAcrew2) we needed to come up with a new experience (a product/service) that will make people more aware about ‘living green’ and encourage them to make more use of services and products that are striving for a more sustainable world.

In the case for Greenpeace we started on the mapping of a journey with the ‘to be’ approach, where you are testing and reflecting the so-called proposed solution. In this solution you will create your ideal situation and the customer will smoothly run through the journey of the concept.

Customer journey mapping — 5 Steps

Customer journey mapping contains 5 steps. Of course, this model or methodology of the customer journey map cannot be exactly applied to every kind of new concept, product or service. Some steps are not applicable, because they won’t fit the category or maybe the product is not part of an ongoing process, and the customer journey will probably stop after purchase or obtaining.

Aware

The start of the journey of your user is all about how to make them note your concept. This means that you start to decide how you are going to reach them and why in this way. In the module of Hyper Island you are focusing on the channels. The channels can be social media, print, television, the event you will present your concept or the building that will create the statue of your new experience. Awareness of your concept is the kickstart or your way of getting to the market you want to reach. Within the aware step, you are trying to convince people why they should join

Join

Joining the concept. Obviously, when you make people aware about the new concept you have built, you want people to join the concept. Within this part of the journey, people have knowledge and information about your product and they are willing to join. The question here is how people can join your service or product. You will guide them with subscriptions and you will try to tackle features and problems that aren’t feasible or that your audience doesn’t understand.

Use

The step from join to use is about the ease to ‘login’ and the simplicity of using something. The use of your service or product will start after joining. The use is defined on how the usability is and what people can and should do to take advantage of a service and product. The use is one of the most important aspects, because it defines what the concept is all about and how the audience (and hopefully non-audience) are using your service. At the other hand, the use of your product is also one of the hardest elements to change, adapt and reflect, because in this stage, the concept can (and will) have a total make-over.

Grow

Growing. The thing that I have learned in growing is that growing is paired with changing. In the customer journey map, the growing part is about testing your product/service and change it in order to make the product (more) suitable for a wider range of audience or to take more advantage out of your current audience. In order to grow, you need to be open to change.

Idle

Idle is the positive word for people who are leaving the experience, concept, product or service. The step of idle is actually something by Andy Young (Design & Innovation Consultant) and he explained that when people are stop using your service/product, the question ‘why’ is definitely very important. Because your need to discover who stopped using your product (a segment or part of your audience) and why they have stopped are essential insights. Have they stopped because of the changes you made during the growth stage? Or does the product doesn’t fit within the context of the time, surroundings and place? Or is the product not suitable anymore for your audience? As a designer, you need to leave your company building by knowing why your customer have left your product and service design.

Discussion

Within start-ups and more progressed businesses, there is a well-known statistic that 90% of new strategies or new ideas fail because their execution is performed badly (Kaplan & Norton, 2008). Within customer journey mapping, basically you are defining the idea by creating new ideation (=idea generation). This means that you need define all different kind of routes that will lead to the end step (growth) in order to define which kind of ‘idea’ or direction is the most ideal according to you and to your users. The idea by creating ideation can partly solve the bad execution of your idea or business.

Pim Minderman — BSSA — Hyper Island

For the Experience Design course of Hyper Island we are assigned to make a weekly ‘Mini-maker’. The mini-maker is to create a small piece of content to spread to the world what Hyper Island is all about, what I am doing to make the world be suprised and what I have learned that is worth sharing with the world.

For the #BSSACrew2 I have made an Instagram were all of our experiences, learnings and information will be shared. Check it out: https://www.instagram.com/bssacrew2/