Let’s create an experience map; the journey of moving alone 😮💨
Read this if you want to learn about experience mapping or how messy moving out can be.
Starting in 2021 I moved out alone to a new apartment to start from zero. To be honest it has been quite an experience but let me elaborate on this. You might think that living on your own in your late 20s looks like a Sex and the city chapter. I mean, you are young, single and you have a good job… in theory sounds like a little bit of fun, passion, and glamour.
Plot twist: Not really… Who would think that even to buy a toilet seat you need to benchmarking if you don’t want to finish up with your 🍑 injured? (True story)
We are more than just designers; however, we spend most of our time at work and, in some sense the line between personal and professional becomes blurry, that’s why I find it interesting to see how design methods and the process can be exemplified with personal matters. I’m not gonna lie, I’m a kinda nerd so I can’t imagine a better way to visualize this experience than creating an experience map 🗺
What is experience mapping, and more important why do we need it?
Experience mapping is a tool that helps you visualize processes from the user perspective. They can be focused just on one stage of the process, from end to end. They can involve just the end-user or different actors and talk about the current experience or the future one. Depending on the data you include and the purpose, you might end up creating a service blueprint, customer journey map or an emotional journey.
How does it look like an experience map? What is the bare minimum I should include? Is it complicated to make an apartment look decent? I LOVE TO OVERSHARE INFORMATION, so I’ll go and explain experience mapping with my personal drama, Ready? 🥳
1. Defining the stages
For my projects I prefer to divide processes on big stages to break them out on smaller steps, then adding a description. That provides a general structure to have a starting poin and it gives the opportunity to add more layers of data, depending on the time left. It results useful, especially when you have tight deadlines. Ok, it might sound confusing but wait for it… I’ll go and explain it line by line with images 🧐
I tend to cover a lot at the same time and i end up feeling overwhelmed. Does it sound familiar? 🤡 I’ll go and split this year into 3 main stages: Moving 🚛, Set up 📦 and settle 🪴
2. Adding details to each of the stages
Here’s where we add granularity to each stage. Include as many details as you want, depending on the time available. What do you want to communicate in each stage? Typically, on a journey map, you might want to explain different touchpoints, channels and artifacts used in the interaction. I’ll describe here the activities in these big chunks:
🚛 Moving:
I know the image is in Spanish… I felt lazy to redo it, but here I’m talking about what happened before the cat arrived at the apartment, that’s the event that made everything feel official. Decision-making to finally stop living with my mom, prep, and finally sleep at my new place.
📦 Set-up:
Once Cat arrived to our new home (that’s my cat’s name) we realized we needed basic stuff to live as a human being, hire services and more importantly to pay the services… Especially the one that if you don’t pay it will ruin your weekend and all the food stored on the fridge.
🪴 Settle:
Once that I hit rock bottom I moved to other stages; 1) realizing that is valid to ask for help 2) You can take a break 3) You need to going back, repeating and finding a way to enjoy the process.
3. Description
🗣 These tools should speak for themselves. They must be self-explanatory for the readers. I know… seems logical but here’s a lesson that applies not only when creating journey maps but also in daily life: Don’t assume (trust me, it will save you a lot of troubles later)
I LOVE TO OVERSHARE INFORMATION, but I’ll try to give an overview of my emotions during my journey.
4. Talk about the emotions lived during each step
Here’s the good stuff 🥩 How do I feel on each of these steps? For me, this line is the star of the show… It guides my decisión making. Why?
To visualize key emotions, help us to keep focus.
You might think ok… but you can change the past so why do you want to visualize it. Yes, we can’t go back and change things, but you can identify growth opportunities. In my case that would be to pay the bills on time to keep my services to avoid go crying back to my mom. The value of maps for projects is clear but running this kind of exercise with personal matters helps us identify life lessons, prioritize action items and specially TAKE ACTION.
Great! I have a cool deliverable… Now what?
There’s something I LOVE TO SAY every time I GOT THE CHANCE. This kind of tool shouldn’t be seen as a checklist 🤯. Each of them must have a clear purpose and be used throughout the design process to create human-centered solutions. The ideal is to go back and consult them whenever you need.
Next step: where to focus my solution?
If you go back to my map there are two high pain points. One was to realize that I can’t do everything by myself. I even did the joke about being a trophy wife… people around me remind me that it’s ok to ask for help. I decided to focus my solution on this pain point because I know I need to work on that, it’s a priority, and If I can solve it will impact other aspects of my life, We are talking that my solution will be scalable.
Now that you know where to focus, the sky is the limit
You could continue with a How Might We to cover different angles to redefine the problem before the ideation.
Before we close …
I took inspo from a professor who told us that he mapped his failed relationship to visualize where the problem started, cool right? and about my journey; I’m trying to remember that things take time and no matter what, processes should be lived, enjoyed, and learn from them.
Ps: Here’s a service blueprint on excel. Take it and make it yours 🤓
Can design tools help you to save your relationship? What other personal experiences do you think would be helpful to map? 🧐
