Collaborative Experience Mapping

Monday, June 5, 2017
Pre-conference course

1. Collaborative
Experience Mapping:
Leveraging Groups for Rapid,
Customer-Generated Journey Maps

2. Agenda.

1.Welcome
2.About CEM
3.Step by Step
4.Discussion & Q&A

3. Elizabeth Zietlow.

Jackie Weeks.

Ben Schweitzer.

4. Introduce Yourselves

5. What is CEM?

6. Collaborative Experience
Mapping
More
Exploratory

More
Evaluative

7. Fast.
Unlike contextual inquiry or 1:1, the group format gets you more quickly to
aggregated insights.
Flexible.
It’s easy to adapt the method to particular research circumstances: Number
of sessions, on location vs. a lab, 60 minutes vs. 2 hours, etc.
Cost Effective.
The approach simulates contextual inquiry without the costs of field
research.
Limits Trade-Offs.
Set-up to help avoid, reduce or identify the usual pitfalls of focus groups.

8. The origin.

9. Little Buy-In.
Little Budget.
Little Time.

10. Contextual in spirit.
Depth of 1:1.
Group Dynamic.

11. Share a story:
Problems getting buy-in?

12. Keys to the method.

13. Reflective thinking.
The goal is for participants to reflect and report on a past experience.
Participants share stories, rather than opinions.
Mapping behavior.
Guide participants through mapping their actions step-by-step from
beginning to end of their experience.
Individual + group time.
Structure the session to have participants work on their own first, map their
own experience, before coming together as a group. This combines insights
from individual reflection and group collaboration.

14. Real people.
Participants who have actually experienced the journey you want to map.
In the same place.
Together into the same room - face to face.
Self-moderation.
After working individually, participants share their journey with the group to
start an open conversation around similarities/dissimilarities with the
experiences of other participants.

15. Fit your needs.

16. Session Timing.
Number of Participants.
Number of Sessions.
Team involvement.

17. Scope of the Map.
Structured/Unstructured.
Layers.
Mid-Step Aggregate.
Materials & worksheets.

18. Outcomes.

19. Collaborative Experience
Maps.
The main outcome of each session: An aggregated map across the
experience that combines insights from all participants.

Individual Artifacts for
In-Depth Analysis.
In addition to the collaborative map you also get all the individual
documentation.

20. Drawbacks.

21. Self-reported.
The data is self-reported data, in particular the individual artifacts.
Not observational.
Doesn’t capture tacit insights that can only be revealed by observation.
Not as intimate as 1 on 1.
Limited follow up on each individual’s experience.

22. When Not to Use.

23. Not a substitute.
CEM is good, but has it’s place. CEM is its own method and should be
carefully used. It’s not an alternative to contextual inquiry or co-design.
Sensitive material.
Anything revolving around private information that participants would
potentially be uncomfortable sharing.
Can’t co-locate.
Co-location is (still) needed to enable the right group dynamic for the
collaborative aggregation.
No reflection/mapping.
The experience you’re studying already needs to exist.

24. When to Use

25. Build an experience
framework.
When you don’t have a lot of background information about the experience
and need to establish a basic framework.
Meet constraints.
When other appropriate research approaches don’t fit the budget and/or
timeframe.
Proof of concept.
To demonstrate the value of research and get buy-in.
Validate assumptions.
To ensure that your high-level assumptions about the experience are true.

26. In Practice.

27. Research
Challenge

28. Step 1: Plan

29. Step 2: Execute

30. Step 3: Synthesize

31. Step 4: Next Steps

32. Q&A

33. Thanks!

Feedback? Yes, Please!