Tools (Reflection)
User journey mapping:
It is a visual
representation of the journey that a user makes when he/she attends a service
which allows us to identify the weak points and strengths of our service in
order to improve the first and maintain the second. Its goal is to identify the
elements of the service and understand the interaction between them in order to
improve any fails during the process, which is counted since the user gets to
know about the service until he/she leaves it.
The main benefit is that
as it breaks down the process into smaller parts it makes it very easy to
identify the problems, which is the main step to be able to correct them.
It is important to bear
in mind that different users will make different uses of the same service so it
is very useful to repeat it for different types of users, thus creating a map
with multiple journeys.
I will create an example
with a small store which sells kitchen material:
Lisa is passing by the
street and sees on the window of the shop cooking utensils. She remembered she needs
a special baking utensil and enters the shop. After searching for a while she
is unable to find it, and asks the staff. They take some time to find it but finally
they hand it to her. Lisa was not expecting that it would take such a long time
for this because she is a busy working mother but buys it and leaves.
With this example we
have discovered that there is a problem referred to the time the particular
task of searching for products in the storage section takes, which we can now
improve by implementing a better storage organisation which could even include
having an inventory linked to the computer.
User shadowing:
A user is observed in
order to identify and understand his/her needs.
The key point here is
choosing the right people to shadow in order to get as much information as
possible.
The main advantage is
that it shows an outside view of the process which makes it possible to
identify things the consumer is not aware of and also prevents the information
the consumers give from being biased as what they say they do and what they
actually do might not necessarily coincide.
User personas:
Information from many
different people is gathered, these people are then divided counting on their
similarities and their information is synthesised into one sole character or
persona which represents them all.
Focus should be made in
the fact that these characters or personas must be archetypes, which means that
their differences must be rounded up, and not stereotypes, which are based on
believes more than on objective information.
This is useful as today’s
market demands each time more personalisation of the services instead of mass
producing. Although it is risky to make a representation of a whole group of
people based just on an average value of their personal information it is
something that has to be done as it is impossible to take into account everyone’s
individual wishes.
I have chosen these 3 particular methods because I think they
complement each other very well. Journey mapping takes the consumers point of
view (which is one of the most important things as the use of our services
relies on them) and divides the service into its basic tasks and activities
which makes it very easy to identify problems. Shadowing does a similar thing
but records the process from the outside (not from the customers view) which takes
away the bias on the information provided by the client and includes
information he/she might not be aware of. Lastly Personas takes all these
different personal experiences and clusters them into representatives to make
it easy to attend to the different needs
of the customers.
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Sources:
Design methods for developing services-Technology Strategy Board
