Creating the Golden Path
Golden paths represent the path customers want to take through your experience. Here’s how to find it.
Think of the golden path as the path your customer wants to take through your offering. This want is based on her intent ( her input) and her desired outcome ( her output) for this experience. One way you can think it the golden path is: if your offering magically reshaped itself to give the customer exactly what she wanted moment-by-moment, what would that look like?
If your offering magically reshaped itself to give the customer exactly what she wanted moment-by-moment, what would that look like ?
Finding intent is important. As humans, we are intent-driven and bring this to bear on any experience. We engage because we want something. Finding out what it is we want is the first step. Like in cinema wants create movement. If the want is strong, the movement will be strong too. If the want is weak, you cannot manufacture it with discounts.
Here’s what intent looks like:
It’s pretty straight-forward: we want specific things ( even an experience or an emotion is a thing ) and the verb tells us what the intensity of the want is. Buy is strong, explore is weak. It’s neither good nor bad by itself. If your offering is around exploration, a weak verb is great. LinkedIn is based on the idea of a weak verb: exploring weak-ties.
We engage because we want something
Knowing the outcome is equally important. Human energy is precious and we understand this intuitively. We want our time to be valued and want something in return for the time we’ve spent on the experience. Often this is points to an emotion we want to feel and suggests to the underlying reason we are engaging in the experience. This is the outcome and here’s what it looks like :
Outcomes are not outputs. They express the underlying emotional reason we engaged in the first place. I want it to fit well and look good ( i.e. make me feel good ), not receive a package.
Outcomes point to the underlying reason we are engaging
With the intent and outcome ( I/O) we can now define the path the customer wants to follow. The golden path is a series of questions and answers. The customer asks a question and receives an answer from the machine. If the answer is a good one, she moves on to the next question. If it’s not, she gets derailed by the answer and stops there. This process continues, moment by moment until she achieves her outcome.
As an example, what questions do you ask of your social media application? Here is mine :
Arguably social media application does not support any part of my intent. Instead, it supports a much lighter form of relating: updates. How would you feel if every time you spoke to a close friend or family, all you got were updates? Now you know why social media feels so dissatisfying, if you’re looking for any meaningful form of interaction — it ignores your intent.
The golden path is a series of questions and answers
If it did not, it would respond to each moment in a different manner. You would be able to skim and find out how all your close friends were doing or feeling quickly and then decide whom to engage within one session. You would choose the best mode, given her current state and need for interaction and pause when both of you felt it was a good enough interaction. You would then schedule the next catch-up right there and the machine would make sure it was blocked on your calendar’s. The machine would also help you cycle through your friends and family and make sure you maintain your level of connectedness.
This little sketch feels so visual because you are thinking in functions. This is one step before embodying them. Do you invent these functions by asking how might the machine best support my customer’s intent at this moment?
Invent functions by asking how might the machine best support my customer’s intent in this moment?
Here’s an example of shopping online from Zara. My questions, moment by moment are :
Notice some key moments like purchase have several questions. Committing to purchase is a big moment and naturally, we have multiple questions fueled by multiple emotions. A good experience will offer an answer for each question, removing any friction to purchase, rather than force the customer down a path the seller wants. If you abuse your power to shape the customer’s choices, by eliminating useful responses, you are indulging in a dark pattern. Customers can feel it — you know when you’ve been sold kitchen towels larger than you need. You will get their money, but not their trust.
If you abuse your power to shape the customer’s choices you are indulging in a dark pattern
Here are the functions I would like to see for this experience:
The red functions are missing on the site. How odd that a fashion site ignores skin color and does not help identify color palettes that work best with certain skin colors. Everyone wants to look good and this is an obvious way to do that. I also cannot filter by price. My inference here is the look is what matters. Not exactly helpful in the purchase process.
And finally, Zara has a key moment they could use to generate loyalty that’s just missed out — the final moment. Simply instructing the delivery person to offer to take her photo, with her phone and hand it back increases the chances of happiness. All the person needs to do is remind the customer to post it to Zara’s Instagram channel. You’d see better pictures and more customer affection.
The final step is to use the golden path and embody the functions. The function includes nouns and verbs with giving you clues: Fit-checker, Mark for Sale, Filter by Price, etc. From there on it’s the usual product design process.
The final step is to use the golden path and embody the functions
How do you arrive at these questions?
Ask your customer to do it. For your offering, have them fill in the Intent and Outcome templates. That will give you the start and endpoint for your golden path. Put these on post-its far enough apart.
Ask your customer to do it
Next, with the intent in mind, ask your customer to use your offering. We know what we want or do not want when we see it, so asking does not help. Instead, ask them to make a note of the questions coming up in their mind, moment by moment and put each one on a post-it as they go through it.
It is better they write it since they can then edit the question and you can have several customers do this in parallel. If you prefer you can have them talk aloud each question they’re asking of the machine while you capture it in post-its.
They stop either when they’ve been derailed or feel their outcome has been achieved. Sequence the questions from all the customer moment by moment and see which questions recur or are the most interesting.
You can then move to design features for the most popular questions along the golden. If you choose to you could also research but less common, but interesting features and analyze if the underlying market segment is large enough. If so, you should develop a feature for this segment.
Here’s a final example. I was helping a sports-based startup through its current website. This took about 45 min and we got some interesting functions. For example, seeing the Deal is a key moment in this experience and how the deal appeared matters. Wouldn’t it be cool, we thought if the deal emerged from an envelope like in the real world? We also saw clearly where the customer had to stop and pay before they proceeded. The business model needed that. The customer has a choice to either stop there or pays and continue. That is authentic in my opinion.
first published in Startup By Design
