Collaborative Journey Mapping for IBM zCX
Think about operating systems (OS) for mobile phones. As you may know, iPhones use Apple iOS, and many other mobile brands, such as Samsung or Nokia, use Android.
The operating system (OS) of your smartphone can determine what applications you can download. Certain applications are developed for Apple iOS but not Android (or vice versa). To make an application available to both, developers have had to code the application twice (once for each operating system). More recently however, new technology allows application developers to code once, and run the application on both iOS and Android. This ability expands beyond smartphones, and is finding footing in mainframe servers too. IBM z/OS Container Extensions (zCX) offers the ability to run Linux applications directly on IBM’s flagship operating system, z/OS.
IBM zCX is largely a back-end technology, so we (the design team) had little opportunity for interface design. Instead, we agreed that IBM zCX was an excellent project for journey mapping to identify the most valuable touchpoints for users and visualize a holistic multi-touchpoint experience.
We kicked off the project collaborating with our team of product managers and engineers to get an understanding of the offering. We facilitated several calls with them to better understand the technology, target users, and vision for the future. We also gleaned their expectations of design. With this, we understood our goal as the design team: to validate the go-to-market touchpoints (mainly the discover, learn, and try experiences) and uncover customers’ challenges when adopting IBM zCX.
Our first activity with the team was an “assumed as-is journey” exercise. The design team led and facilitated a MURAL activity to capture an initial user journey from various internal perspectives (shown below).
The MURAL includes each step of a user’s journey. For each step, there are rows to add what a user is thinking, doing, or feeling. There’s also a row for the touchpoints a user interacts with. Our team filled in the rows with their understanding of the current journey.
We used the assumed as-is journey to identify gaps in our knowledge and assumed user pain points. These became research focal points, as they indicate lack of understanding of the experience and potential problem areas within the journey, respectively. We played back our findings to our team of engineers and product managers.
After capturing the assumed as-is journey and sharing our results, we wanted to validate it with real users. In collaboration with our engineers and product managers, we defined our goals for our user research:
a) Get a complete understanding of users’ journeys and touchpoints.
b) Understand where on the journey users get “stuck” or face challenges.
We used findings from the assumed as-is journey to draft an interview protocol. Our protocol contained separate sections for different journey steps. We asked users questions about their discover experience, how they learned about zCX, everyday use, and what potential they see in the offering.
One person does not experience the entire journey alone, so we spoke to different personas within each organization. This painted a more complete picture of the organization’s journey with IBM zCX.
During our interview synthesis we identified which touchpoints help users progress through the steps. We mapped these in a journey blueprint. The blueprint helped us see patterns across multiple users. We could compare individual journeys and understand common trends all in one view.
By unpacking the IBM zCX user journey map, our team of product managers, engineers, and designers gained clarity on user needs in the discover, learn, and try experiences. Our team also learned to be more intentional about what we provide users at each step of their journey.
This article was written in collaboration with
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Andrea Burgueno is a Service Designer & Design Researcher at IBM. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
