#journey map

AI is significantly changing the way designers work. One example of this is how we employ Journey Maps. A Journey Map is a diagram that depicts the experience a person has with a product or service. It’s typically based on a persona—a generalized representation of a segment of users or customers. It explains their journey, step-by-step, from the beginning of a defined engagement to its end. This could be an interaction with a device, a visit to a website, a real-word encounter at a physical location, or a combination of any of these. It details the actions a person takes, their emotional responses, the devices or channels they use, and the pain points they encounter.

Historically, Journey Maps have been a method first for documenting research that teams carry out with users. They would spend weeks observing and interviewing people, taking notes, and then synthesizing all of the collected information. They would then visualize the journey on a wall or a whiteboard.

AI is flipping the script. A designer can now ask AI to generate a journey based on the data it can find. In most cases, there is already enough information available to get a reasonably accurate picture. We can rapidly create a journey map as a starting place for understanding. We then take that artifact and use it as a focal point for discussions with users, validating it or making changes to it as we go.

My daughter Genevieve graduated from college two weeks ago. She still has to complete an internship to officially receive her diploma and certification as a music therapist. The unpaid internship starts in August and is considered part of her curriculum, so we have to pay tuition. To be clear, the school did not provide the internship—she had to get that on her own. That’s all to say that she has to start working on location, but she can’t afford a car.

My wife and I decided to help her out there. Last week, I took her car shopping, and she decided on a Kia Seltos. The dealer was able to find the trim level and color she wanted, and she was able to pick it up today: her birthday.

The only incentive they offered was for veterans. My father-in-law is a veteran, and he wanted to help by paying for the car and letting us pay him back interest free, rather than taking out a loan. So, we arranged for him to drive up from Maryland today to do that. He would have to be listed as co-owner, but we would get a $500 discount. So far, so good.

Genevieve is still on my insurance policy as a driver, and I assumed we could just add her car to my insurance, as she can’t afford to pay for auto insurance yet either. That assumption was incorrect. I learned yesterday that the dealer couldn’t sell us the car unless she was a policy holder, and she couldn’t be made a policy holder of my insurance, because she no longer resides with me. So, we quickly got her own insurance policy set up. I paid for it, but it’s her policy. Problem solved.

While my father-in-law was driving up from Maryland today, we learned that the dealer wouldn’t accept a personal check from out of state. He would need a cashier’s check. That would require him to drive three hours round trip to visit a branch of his bank in Morgantown, WV. Rather than do that, he wrote a check to my son-in-law, who was able to deposit it at his local bank. They put a five-day hold on the check, so he then wrote a check dated after the other check would clear to the dealership. They accepted that, but had to add him as an owner of the car, rather than my father-in-law, so we didn’t get the veteran’s discount.

In the end, my daughter has her car, but it was an awful customer experience, and I’m sure our salesperson was frustrated by the whole process. This would make a terrible mess of a journey map.

I’m sure there are many legal reasons for our troubles, but did it really have to be that difficult?

This week the focus is mainly on ideation phase of the IDEO human centered design, theory of change, journey mapping and storyboard are completed.

The theory of change framework is based on the impact ladder and the ecosystem mapping from the week before. The theory of change is used for finding what shifts/ impacts of the design is most suited for the problem statement. Working through the TOC, I find that the solution of using an AI chat app would be the most applicable due to the accessibility, simplicity and provides higher priority of impacts. The risk is also clear, due to the app being AI based there are chances of misuse AI, and AI providing bad advice or wrong information. While the TOC provides an insight into the specific changes of the design solution, but the framework does not take into account any other possible changes, maybe other frameworks can be used in tandem to make TOC more accurate.

Next, I worked on the journey map for the user, which helps visualize UX from start to end. This eventually lead to storyboarding.