Map Activity

What

The map activity is a crucial step in understanding your user or customer. The version I present here is my modification of the map activity described in Google Ventures' Design Sprint book. The map addresses the Main Characters, Key Steps, and Optimistic Outcomes in your customer/user story. You'll use learnings from your customer persona(s) to start with your customer's needs to map out the journey your customer will undertake to realize your brilliant solution. The assumptions you made about demographics and behaviors are important to the map because they suggest the primary ways your customer might learn about, evaluate, and ultimately buy your solution. You want to be as fluent as you can with the ideas under each category so you have more insights into what your most crucial assumptions are. You will want to test those assumptions early so you don't waste resources building something nobody wants or wasting the wrong people's time.

What else? Your map should grow as you consider adding different customer personas (i.e., different types of people who might want your value proposition) and different ways your customers might find out about, evaluate, and buy your product. A side benefit from doing this is that you might be able to incorporate the discovery or delivery method into your value proposition.

Materials

• Stacks of sticky notes
• Pens and Sharpie markers
• Whiteboard, poster board, or large blank background ("canvas" in the parlance of today...)
• Whiteboard markers if you're using a whiteboard
• Camera to take high-resolution digital image (e.g., iPhone)

See also

User Journey Mapping

Map Gallery

created April 27, 2020; soon to be populated