Mapping Experiences, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9. Envisioning Future Experiences: Build the Right Solution

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

—Lewis Carroll

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Planning experiments
• Design maps and user story maps
• Business model canvas and value proposition canvas
• Case study: Rapid online mapping and design workshop

In the preface, I urged you to empathize with the people you serve. The way to do this is clear: view your offering from the outside in rather than the inside out. It’s also important to develop empathy before conceiving new solutions. Distinguish gaining empathy from applying empathy as an act of ­compassion.

I’ve experienced this trap in the past. At a prior company I worked for, for example, a small team spent two months behind closed doors developing a new concept that helped people plan events. They had no contact with potential ­customers.

To anyone who already had close contact with our target users it was immediately clear this solution had serious flaws. It didn’t address actual users’ needs, and it didn’t match their mental model. Despite the team’s passion, their fully fledged product concept was doomed from the outset. They could have spent their time more wisely if they had better defined the problem to solve first. Note that I am not advocating big up-front research. It need not take long, and mapping helps teams develop a common understanding of an individual’s experience and frame the problem. For this reason, this book has ...