Blob mapping

Map your practice competency in a few minutes

The blob mapping exercise is one of the quickest and most popular I have used over the past 13 years with designers. There’s something charming about the odd shapes that people make on the rather bizarre chart. It looks wrong, but it’s remarkably straight forward and effective.

How to do it

1. Take a template. Either the original quadrant, or the double quadrant.
2. Very quickly draw how competent you feel you are in each of the different categories
3. Add arrows to the shape where you’d ideally like to grow
4. Annotate and/or discuss the shape with a peer, your manager or your report

How it came about

Some of my colleagues from the Experience Architecture team at Oyster-Framfab (before it became LBi, and now Digitas) attended an Adaptive Path course back in 2005.

My good friend and several-time colleague, Warren Hutchinson (currently runs Else London), had taken inspiration from one of the domain models of UX. It was likely the product of Peter Merholz or Jesse James Garrett. Warren realised we could start mapping the teams against this simple framework. With blobs.

We could quickly draw the shapes of the designers against the four areas. Experience Strategy. User Research. Interaction Design. Information Architecture.

A simple model of key UX skills/modes/domains

I really liked it and continued to reference it and build on it when I went to other agencies.

My post-rationalistic mapping to other disciplines

I also decided to include it in many of my talks, alongside The Perfect EA Poster (more on that in another post). It got a lot of interest. And criticism. UX people can hardly agree on anything concrete.

I used to joke that the collective noun for UX folk was an ‘argument’, as in ‘an argument of UX’.

Despite others’ and my own criticism, I used it a lot in hiring. Explaining the categories. Drawing my own shape. Then asking a candidate to quickly draw theirs. I wasn’t measuring them. I was just trying to understand how they saw themselves.

My shape from 2011

And I would ask people where they saw themselves growing. Adding arrows to their blobs. The purpose was to have an anchor for a discussion.

In parallel to doing this with people I was hiring, I would do it with my team as well. As part of their initial meetings. As part of their reviews. Every now and again. I think it helped.

Mapping team members and annotating

Part of its beauty was in its reductive nature, and the coarseness of the blob sketching done at pace.

Around that time I also started to manage more ‘visual’ designers. VDs — god they hated that term. “why can’t you just call it design?”. Because you can’t. That’s way too fluffy. It’s more complex than that.

Even so, I knew I had to represent some of the fields of practice that made up more of that ‘visual’ design world. Information Design. Motion Graphics. And the rather tricky Visual Language. I once called it ‘Glossy Graphics’ as a provocation. Then ‘Visual Polish’ — not much better. I felt that there was some shared perspective on ‘Interaction Design’. In fact, I ended up creating another sort of double diamond.

I sometimes presented them as a double diamond, but not here

And a layer cake model, which I used to explain the different disciplines or fields to clients, colleagues and peers.

A different type of Layer Cake to Jesse James Garrett’s infamous one with lots of simplifications that were imperfect

I use eight categories in the workshops

The final eight categories I use

Despite my development of the UX Spectrum with VitaminT (more in a future post), I still use the quadrants in the sessions I run.

For two reasons:

1. Firstly, because as an exercise it’s really quick and hands-on.
2. Secondly, because the UX Spectrum doesn’t have a few categories which I think are important when referring to Visual or UI design

I wanted to keep motion graphics, information design, and visual language (NB, I ended up with this which is a bit nicer than visual polish, but not entirely what I intend by that).

So, the main categories at a high level:

1. Experience Strategy
2. Interaction Design
3. User Research
4. Information Architecture
5. Copywriting
6. Motion Graphics
7. Information Design
8. Visual Language

The divergence of Experience Strategy

I always struggle trying to define Experience Strategy. But think of it as a blend of Design Strategy for experience stuff, the more strategic parts of Service Design, more designerly Customer Experience, and some aspects of Product Management.

For a while, there was a trend in having Experience Planners — albeit mostly at more ‘creative’ agencies where the discipline of Planning was better understood and celebrated. They would live here.

If I am uncomfortable with any of the categories in the quadrants, it’s probably this one.

The importance of copywriting

I also added copywriting because I am learning how important that is as a skill for design across a variety of other disciplines and altitudes including:

1. Strategic framing — words matter and can help spin approaches in all sorts of directions
2. Service design — so many touchpoints need to be considered, and often words drive them. From a GUI, to a call centre script. From a sign on a street, to a letter from your utility provider.
3. Graphical User Interface design — most problems in graphical User Interface occur at the verbal level with the words being used, whether a call to action, a label, or just not enough clarity
4. Voice User Interface design — getting the tone right
5. And so much more

Words usually matter more than pictures. But because everyone thinks they can write or talk. It’s hard to justify getting in a professional who can cut your prose down by a significant %, say more, excite someone and actually be understood. No wonder there is a rise in content strategy, UX writing and the like.

Why do you think I am trying to write more of these Medium posts?

I’m trying to get better at writing.

Labels are a nightmare, models are messy

Through my work around this, I kept getting great positive feedback. But there was always criticism. My labels weren’t great. My definitions not fully sound. My models were a little simplistic or messy. But they helped. I didn’t ever expect to get industry consensus. I only hoped to edge towards more clarity.

Whenever, Defining The Damned Thing (DTDT) came up, I would always say it is more nuanced. Break it down. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself. It’s how you are shaped. How you are different that mattered. This helped in hiring, building a team.

The rise of the UX Amoeba

I was intrigued to see that someone has taken this work and has created a little tool for the world, and named it the UX Amoeba.

The UX Amoeba tool

Nicknamed the UX Amoeba, the tool allows you to create your own version digitally. Check it out here.

Quick gap and strength spotting

With multiple charts drawn by people in the team, you can overlap the shapes to get a quick snapshot of the self-perceived strengths of the team, and any gaps in practice areas.

Obviously this breaks down if you have too many people mapped.

A few too many shapes overlapping causes a bit of a mess

But with less than ten you can see some patterns (eg, looking via a particular job title or across a small team). Just don’t read into them too much. They are very quick self-reflections and the power is in the discussion around the shapes.

A little clearer

Want to find out more, follow the series

If you want to learn more about the Shaping Workshops I run, and what I have learned over the years, follow me, or read some other articles in the Medium Publication.

Keep your eyes peeled for another post tomorrow.