How Stakeholder Mapping can help you in primary UX research
While solving a problem or building a product or service, stakeholder mapping is one of the most helpful techniques. We will discuss it in the following article.
Before starting any design process or solving any problem, it is very important to first understand the entire ecosystem of the problem. In order to do the same, one needs to understand all the perspectives of the problem, be it business, the user or the tech. While understanding the users, stakeholder mapping is one of the essential tools when it comes down to conducting research.
Why Stakeholder Mapping?
- Before you start solving the problem, you have your target users listed down.
- The product ecosystem does not necessarily impact only your hypothetical target user, but also the people related to them.
- Helps you understand the relationship between different people who are associated with the user or the process.
How to practice Stakeholder Mapping?
In order to understand this concept, let us see it as writing the script of a movie.
While writing a script, one tends to have many characters in a story.
- In the movie, we have one protagonist. This protagonist is the one who will be at the centre of our attention while chalking out this map.
- Next, we will find supporting roles that all are connected to our protagonist. We will name these entities as ‘Stakeholders’.
- While understanding the side heroes (or the stakeholders), you tend to draw a relation between them.
- After understanding these relations, we will start drawing more possibilities between these characters to provide that depth to the script
- Finally, we will have a relation map between all of the character
Understanding with an example
We need to build an easier way of communicating between the activists while they are organising a protest.
The Main Character- Organisers & Activists
Supporting Roles- Police, Celebrities, Govt officials, Media houses etc.
Once we have these Stakeholders listed, we start with mapping them on the plain whiteboard and draw out as many relationships as we can draw
In the above example, we could clearly understand how are all of the stakeholders connected to each other directly and indirectly. Interesting insights?
- Many supporting characters (stakeholders) are connected to each other as well other than just being connected to the main character.
- Some supporting roles are connected to the main character monolaterally, i.e. they just either give or take. Others connect bilaterally, i.e. they give and take both.
- When making a solution for these organisers, we need to keep all the stakeholders in mind and deliver a solution in a way it satisfies the entire ecosystem for a robust solution.
How it helped us in Cars24
Problem Statement- Building a robust experience for Car Evaluators in the seller domain in order to reduce the inspection time, reduce errors in the report and improve the overall interaction experience of car evaluators.
Finding Characters
The Main Character- Car Evaluators
Supporting Roles- Car Owners, Retail Associate/ Relationship Manager, Quality Check Team, Technical Training Team.
Based on these characters, we started to think of the relationship between the characters and started mapping those with the Car Evaluator. You can find the result below.
Conclusion
Next time you start to solve a problem, try to draw out all the stakeholders. It gives a holistic or an eagle’s point of view toward the problem.
I hope you found the article helpful. Want to hit a conversation? Drop a mail at vaibhavverma2752@gmail.com.
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