Experience impact mapping

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What it is: a view of the changes you’re making, and what that means around the flow in scope.

When to use it:

  • When you want to know who else to inform, to collaborate with

  • As a way to catch edge cases and scenarios that might live on the fringe of stakeholder awareness

  • As a way to build healthy cross-team roadmaps and backlogs

How to use it:

  • Map out a generic user flow that captures your project’s scope

  • Lay out your project’s channel(s) and the actions a user takes

  • As you go through your flow, think about what other touchpoints might happen at this same moment - and how do they relate.

  • Can a user take the same action in different ways (parity)? If the user takes the action in your project’s scope, is there something that you’d expect to change elsewhere (consequence)? In order for a moment to be successful, does something else have to happen (dependency)?

 

As in all things maps and stickies - the point here is not to lose yourself in the weeds. The key success factor for this template is that it helps you realize opportunities that might have been taken for granted, or catch relations between silos that could use some bridge building.

Maps like this can become great facilitation tools when you work with back-end architects. A way to ask questions, document hypotheses, and tie your storyboards, wireframes, and prototyping to specific pieces of an architecture diagram.

 

This works great with

  • Service blueprints - as part of an intake workshop, this map is the 5,000 ft view to a service blueprint’s 10 ft view

  • Cross-project views - once you have a general sense of how your project impact the user’s experience, it is easier to have “ears to the ground” and pick up on work that is meaningful

 

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