This document discusses the customer journey and design thinking process. It defines a customer journey as a graphic representation of a customer's experience through interactions (touchpoints) with a provider. It notes that customer journeys are based on real events but do not represent a single customer's experience or the entire service. The document provides guidance on when and how to use customer journeys, and describes methods for gathering customer insights like contextual interviews, shadowing, cultural probes, and personas.

2. THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY
March 12, 2014

3. Nice to meet you.
I am Mikel Ayala, manager at Prosumerlab (prosumerlab.com).
Prosumerlab is a strategic design consultancy firm.
We work with our clients, both public and private, in four main areas:

4. Empathizing with consumers and
understanding their needs

5. Designing new products, services and
user experiences

6. Sketching strategies for
communication and spreading

7. Creating innovative training contents,
based on storytelling

8. Please join us!
Profooders is one of our latest developments (profooders.com).
We create campaigns where we match consumers and companies in the
food sector. This scheme is beneficial for both:
• Companies can test their assumptions and try new solutions regarding
packaging, size of portions, taste…
• Consumers receive free samples of the products at home and give
their opinion in a simple, fun way

9. Examples
What are your thoughts on these customer journeys?

12. Context
What do you already know about Design Thinking?

13. There are many definitions.
Matching people’s needs with
what is technologically feasible
and viable as a business strategy.
Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

14. Design Thinking aims towards innovation.

15. Design Thinking is human-centered.
it focuses on people /
customers and their
needs, and not on a
specific technology or
other conditions
it relies on feeling,
intuition and
inspiration, not only on
rationality and anlysis
it uses methods such
as observations,
interviews,
prototyping…

16. Design Thinking is a process.
Bootcamp Bootleg, Stanford D. School

17. The Design Thiking process is iterative.

18. This process is diverging / converging.
Human-Centered Design Toolkit, IDEO

19. Design Thinking emphasizes prototyping.
If you are not embarrassed by the
first version of your product,
you’ve launched too late.
Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

21. Definition
What is a customer journey?

22. A customer journey is:
A graphic representation that
distills research into a concise,
visually compelling story of the
customer’s experience.

23. The customer’s experience is:
The result of every interaction
(touchpoint) with the provider.
Customers always have an
experience (good, bad, or indifferent).

24. A touchpoint is:
An interaction with emotional
resonance for the customer.
Touchpoints of low satisfaction
are known as painpoints.

25. A customer journey is NOT:
The experience of one real customer
Even though it’s based on real events
A representation of the whole service
Although it may include most of its key points
An idealized view the service
There are other tools for representing what the service should be like
✗
✗
✗

26. Usage
Why / when / how should I use a customer journey?

27. WHY?
Because it creates empathy
The service provider can see the customer and understand his/her needs
Because it is visual
The service provider detects areas of improvement and opportunities, fast
Because it is compelling
The service provider is moved towards action (creation & implementation)
✓
✓
✓

28. WHEN?
customer journey

29. WHEN?
customer journey

30. HOW?
The customer journey has two axis, TIME (x) and SATISFACTION (Y).
satisfaction
time

31. HOW?
It also has three dimensions: DO (actions, objective), THINK (rational
experience) and FEEL (emotional experience).
feel
think
do

32. time
do
think
feel (1)
feel (2)

33. Sources
How / where do we gather information?

34. Empathy, empathy, empathy.
Empathy is the mental habit that
moves us beyond thinking of
people as laboratory rats or
standard deviations.
Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

35. There are three main approaches.
Observe
And, as much as possible, do observations in relevant contexts
Engage
Don’t think of talking to a user as an interview, try to make it a conversation
Watch and listen
Watch people while they interact, ask them to complete a task (think aloud)
✓
✓
✓

36. Method 1: Contextual interview
We emphasize the adjective “contextual”:
• Context makes the user feel confortable (or distressed)
• It allows us to ask them to complete a task or enact an interaction
• Relevant details can only emerge in a relevant context
The quality of the answers depends entirely on the questions:
• Try to combine closed-ended and open-ended questions
• Ask why, ask why and keep asking why (the 5whys)
If possible, record the interview so you can quote directly.

37. Contextual interviews: a user explains
how he uses a new coffee machine
(project with Cafés Baqué)

38. Method 2: Shadowing / A Day in the Life
If you’re trying to become the user’s shadow:
• Be as friendly and nonintrusive as posible
• Ask the users to think aloud while they perform any interesting action
• Don’t hesitate to ask why if there’s anything you don’t understand
Sometimes you may need to see the user in a wider context, and this is
when you should move from “Shadowing” to “A Day in the Life”.

39. Shadowing: a general practicioner interacts with a
multimorbid patient (project about multimorbidity
with O+Berri, Osakidetza)

40. Method 3: Cultural probes
There may be projects where you can’t speak to the users directly:
• They are geographically scattered
• The subject is too difficult or intimate
• Or, simply, they are too many (and you aren’t paid enough)
Cultural probes are the perfect method in these cases.
They are usually presented as a toolkit that comprises a set of instructions, a
workbook, and a photocamera.

41. Cultural probes: toolkits specifically designed
for frontdesk workers at Angulas Aguinaga
(training project based on storytelling)

42. Method 4: Personas
Personas (arquetipes) isn’t an optional method.
You should work on personas before developing any customer journey.
Personas are relevant arquetipes.
They are meaningful for the product / service you’re dealing with, because
their previous experiences, characteristics and needs, the way they interact
with the provider, their expectations… are distinct.
You should think of developing a customer journey for each relevant persona
or arquetipe.

43. meaningful details
pictures are important
avoid stereotyping!!✗

44. These are a few general recommendations.
Take pictures
As you already know, a picture is worth 1000 words
Don’t judge
Make sure the user isn’t under any kind of pressure
Eavesdrop
Listen to spontaneous exchanges between customers and service providers
✓
✓
✓

46. Exercise
Now let’s make a customer journey!

47. Please remove your shoes.
Empathy is not walking in
another’s shoes, first you need to
remove your own.
Scott Cook, Founder of Intuit

48. Details for the practical exercise.

49. If you want to learn more.
Bootcamp Bootleg, Stanford Design School:
https://dschool.stanford.edu/use-our-methods/
Human-Centered Design Toolkit, IDEO:
http://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit/
This is Service Design Thinking (book & website):
http://thisisservicedesignthinking.com/
The Lean Startup (book & website):
http://theleanstartup.com/
Mapping the customer experience (presentation):
http://www.slideshare.net/joyce_hostyn/writing-great-experiences-customer-experience-
journey-maps
Customer journey mapping (presentation):
http://www.slideshare.net/brandriveninnovation/consumer-journey-mapping