Experience Models are Data as a Story
In order for clients to connect with user research, design researchers need to organize the data into clear frameworks that can be referenced consistently and digested quickly. Experience models enable designers to portray user research in ways that tell a story about those users’ lives and how they would interact with a product/service. Though research would be incredibly inefficient to absorb, and ineffective to use, if not presented in these models, experience models are not flawless, and they need to include the right information in the correct order to achieve their desired effect.
Personas can be limited in the sense that it is impossible to represent the thoughts and feelings of every single user or potential user. Once the main roles of users, or patterns in the data, float to the surface, it may not be necessary to worry about outliers. However, since these models are meant to showcase the goals, needs, desires, and feelings of the users, what most limits these models is the data itself. When the data obtained only focuses on people’s experience surrounding a product/service, and not on broader information about their lives, activities, and motives, it is doable to create a journey map of their experience, but not to develop potential solution areas for innovation. Designers need to fully understand users’ motives within all aspects of their lives, not just surrounding what a company can provide.
To make the biggest case for change, different models can be sequenced together to tell the best story. In my opinion, the story should begin with where users fit into an ecosystem map. Taking a high level view of users’ environments and external influence gives a good picture into what roles the users are playing in their lives, and how a product/service plays a role in their lives. Next, we should focus specifically on the users and their experiences with a product/service, as well as their overall life experiences. Mental Models should be created before the first persona. It is important to know all the different ways that users think about a certain situation or experience in order to figure out what personas to flesh out. Personas will then deepen the mental models from just explaining how a person thinks, to now showing their needs and desires in life. Then, where to go from here depends on how much time and resources design researchers have. If they have the time, fleshing out journey maps for each persona is a great way to highlight changes in emotion and gaps in the experience. However, if time is short, researchers should cut right to developing the Customer Profiles and Value Maps. These models are critical for determining next steps for identifying fixes to existing services or developing brand new services. These could also highlight areas where more research is needed, in which it is possible that all the steps will need to be adjusted for all the new information gathered. This process can be very time consuming and iterative, and people have different levels of enjoyment and thoughts of necessity towards creating different models. The most crucial analysis to convey to clients are the users’ needs, JTBD/pains/gains, and the way they think about their current situation, so as long as these are made clear, the people in charge of designing and generating products and services will approach their process in a human-centered way.
Amy Zasadzinski
