1. Confab Higher Ed 1
@marsinthestars
JOURNEY MAPPING FOR
CONTENT STRATEGY
November 8, 2017
DATE
Marli Mesibov – VP, Content Strategy
PREPARED BY
#ConfabEDU
2. Confab Higher Ed 2
@marsinthestars
Kitten Mapping for Content Strategy
@marsinthestars
3. Confab Higher Ed 3
@marsinthestars
WHO AM I?
Specializing in improving communication in education,
healthcare, and finance to create better user and
business outcomes.
Marli Mesibov, VP of Content Strategy
@marsinthestars
5. Confab Higher Ed 5
@marsinthestars
I took a journey
Application I applied to Confab EDU using the online form. Computer
Acceptance
I received an email accepting my talk, responded, and began
looking up flights to book.
Tablet
Travel
I checked in the day before, then took an Uber to the
airport, flew to Indianapolis, and took a cab to the hotel.
Phone
Arrive I checked into the hotel, went to my room and unpacked. Phone/Kiosk
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
6. Confab Higher Ed 6
@marsinthestars
Why Journeys Matter
Journey-First Thinking
OUR JOURNEY TODAY
How to Create a Journey Map
How to Use Your Journey Map
1
2
3
4
8. Confab Higher Ed 8
@marsinthestars
Simple Tasks
How can a prospective student access a
list of all 2018 courses?
WHY JOURNEYS MATTER
Visit site Click
“Academics”
Browse
Courses
Success!
9. Confab Higher Ed 9
@marsinthestars
Complex Tasks
How can the university attract the right
students, and ensure they apply?
WHY JOURNEYS MATTER
Visit site Click “Academics” Browse
Courses
Leave site
10. Confab Higher Ed 10
@marsinthestars
Higher education is a complicated industry. We need to define information
architectures and communicate with multiple audiences completing a plethora
of tasks. Many projects fail because we don’t account for complexity early on.
Identify Top Goals
Find Opportunities to
Connect
Account for Each
Audience
Create Better Site Maps and
Design Responsively
WHY JOURNEYS MATTER
11. Confab Higher Ed 11
@marsinthestars
Mad*Pow’s Process
Our UX Design agency follows a research-centric process, and journey mapping is a big
part of identifying the strategy for our designs.
RESEARCH FINDINGS STRATEGY
Process
DESIGN TESTING/OPTIMIZATION
Repeat
WHEN DO WE MAP?
JOURNEY
MAPPING
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CONFAB HIGHERED:
JOURNEY-FIRST THINKING
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@marsinthestars
Mobile
JOURNEY-FIRST THINKING
Desktop
14. Confab Higher Ed 14
@marsinthestars
JOURNEY-FIRST THINKING
Desktop
15. Confab Higher Ed 15
@marsinthestars
Mobile
JOURNEY-FIRST THINKING
Desktop
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@marsinthestars
JOURNEY-FIRST THINKING
Desktop
18. Confab Higher Ed 18
@marsinthestars
“If I’m browsing and adding to a cart on my
smartphone, I expect that same history and half-
filled shopping basket to be carried across to the
desktop site, and vice versa. It’s the only way to
guarantee customer satisfaction, aid conversion,
and encourage return visits.”
- Christopher Ratcliff, More than 40% of Online
Adults are Multi-device Users (2014)
JOURNEY-FIRST THINKING
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@marsinthestars
Types of Journey Maps
IT TAKES ALL KINDS
UX flowProduct/service experiences
Channels and touch points
Persona’s narrative
Emotional journey maps
Blueprints
*Taken from Sharhzad Samadzeh’s talk, Don’t Make a Journey Map
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@marsinthestars
The journey is the path a person takes from the start of the experience, through
to the end of the experience.
Along the way they encounter…
Touch points with the brand
Interactions with the application
Journey-First Thinking
23. Confab Higher Ed 23
@marsinthestars
CONFAB HIGHERED:
FIND THE PATH
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@marsinthestars
Journey mapping for content strategy in 4 steps
FIND THE PATH
Connect the touch points to channels
1 Interview end-users
Create personas
Map the user flows
2
3
4
25. Confab Higher Ed 25
@marsinthestars
• Interview 8-10 from each sub audience
• Learn about the goals, and the tasks they
associate with those goals
• Ask for details
• Try to find out where someone is when they
take actions
• Are they prompted to take action, or
do they initiate?
FIND THE PATH: INTERVIEWS
No need to conduct…
Even if you don’t
personally conduct user
interviews, you can
(and should!) still weigh
in on what is asked in
the interviews.
27. Confab Higher Ed 27
@marsinthestars
FIND THE PATH: USER FLOWS
Include…
• Step-by-step actions to
accomplish a task
• What devices the persona
might use
• Where the persona might be
emotionally and physically
Don’t include…
• Broad, overarching steps
(think “build the
foundation” not “build the
house)
• Minutiae
• Rationale or caveats
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@marsinthestars
• Conduct a workshop or casual work
session to connect each touch point to the
appropriate channel
• Discuss the design implications
• Invite more people, not less
• Document everything
This is when we begin designing the interactions
FIND THE PATH: CHANNELS
29. Confab Higher Ed 29
@marsinthestars
CONFAB HIGHERED:
HOW TO USE IT
30. Confab Higher Ed 30
@marsinthestars
• Reference the map when you’re
considering which device the team should
design for first
• Create content that primarily meets the
needs of the most-used device
• Consider the context for every interaction
with the end-user:
• Where will they be?
• What else will they be doing?
HOW TO USE YOUR JOURNEY MAP
31. Confab Higher Ed 31
@marsinthestars
• If the end-user begins, how do we
respond?
• And then what do they do/say?
• And then what do we do/say?
Design a conversation
HOW TO USE YOUR JOURNEY MAP
32. Confab Higher Ed 32
@marsinthestars
RESOURCES
• Designing Multi-Device Experiences
by Michal Levin (book)
• Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content
by Karen McGrane (presentation)
• Designing Digital Strategies
by Sofia Hussain (article)
• Don’t Make a Journey Map
by Shahrzad Samadzadeh (article)
• Journey Mapping for Content Strategy
by Marli Mesibov (article)
33. Confab Higher Ed 33
@marsinthestars
THANK YOU
Confab HigherEd 2017
Marli Mesibov
marli@madpow.com
marsinthestars
Mad*Pow
Notas do Editor
How many of you consider yourself a designer?
You are! You are a content designer. Strategists define the content touch points for a user’s experience with an application or site (the journey)
How many of you consider yourself a designer?
You are! You are a content designer. Strategists define the content touch points for a user’s experience with an application or site (the journey)
Starts when the audience member first hears about your school
Or when they first get to your site
Or when they first see your social media item
For some people, the journey to your school begins the minute their child is born, and they start to worry about paying for college someday
My journey from theater to film to software to UX – that’s how I used to see user journeys. Big and overwhelming. But we can start more recently, my journey from Boston to Indianapolis.
Each email needs a sub-goal and related action that inform the overall campaign goal.
Example: ask someone in your org how students choose your university
No journey map necessary! Nice and straight forward
Now ask a student how they choose a university
Aaron Rester told you how to find the top tasks! (not too many, not too few)
Opportunities to connect – that’s what we talked about yesterday in Matt McFadden’s Personalization session. Guiding people to help them think about the choices they need to make
Journey maps are how you find those goals, those opportunities, and those audience differentiators
Luke Wroblewski popularized (2009), Karen McGrane (2012)
Designing with the constraints of small screens helps us to prioritize content, which leads to a better experience for the end user.
Capabilities of mobile devices left more opportunities for engaging experiences.
Look at the content breakdown: highest priority? User needs to see the headline, and an intro.
34% of people use the internet predominantly from their mobile phones – this is table stakes!!!!
Kano model: Table stakes, Incremental, Delighter
Responsive design! - which is still good, but it’s no longer a delighter. It’s a table stakes.
Sometimes you have chosen a specific device because it takes great photos or charges very well
Sometimes you need to use your phone because there’s no lap space for your laptop
Sometimes you use a book
Good design doesn’t force users to pick up the device that we designers want them to pick up
TV in bedroom
Phone in bathroom
Tablet in kitchen…
This goes beyond responsive design.
Responsive experience? Connected experience.
Adaptive Path’s journey map
What are the touch points – how do we communicate with them/how does ANYONE communicate with them? There may be options here – that’s cool too.
Client in Texas, “how granular do we get?”
I spoke on journey maps, and met the speaker before me… Shahrzad Samadzadeh talk at Big Design 2016 (Don’t Make a Journey Map) said the workshop process is more important than the end product. So get as granular as you like, talk it out.
Who’s responsible for each step? Now we start getting down into what we can/should do for each step.
American Intercontinental University
Mad*Pow’s journey map – explain the process of a workshop (USAA started with waking up in the morning)
All different sorts of journey maps – but this is focusing on output
The best journey map is the one that will help you identify these things
Demographics, but more importantly, the goal, needs, and variables.
Behavioral demographics
Sticky notes are your friend
Future strategy relies on current journey map
Phase 2 doesn’t have to mean “phase never”