Story maps aren’t the whole story
Story Maps are a quick (relatively) clear way of visualizing whole systems and articulating what a user DOES to achieve their tasks. It attempts to distill steps into actions, actions into core functionality, and it allows the freedom of creativity for ideas on how to accomplish certain actions/tasks. It is necessary. I won’t go into “The power of visualization” here, but you can read about it in an article by Forbes. When we can see the whole of the thing, we can make smarter decisions.
Empathy maps are designed to build empathy for users by imagining what they are Seeing, Saying, Doing, and Hearing when they are using your product
Story maps
In Discovery we spend a lot of time focusing on the user and their needs at both a high level and at a feature level. We watch them use our products and note places they get confused. We might incorporate these learnings into a journey map or Story Map as pain points or moments of joy because these things are important to give visibility to—especially the places they feel pain.
Story mapping is a concept created by the distinguished player in this field, Jeff Patton. He literally wrote the book on it. If you haven’t read it you should. Or, you can read the quick & dirty about it here.
Let’s look at a basic example of a journey map using the Apple Maps app to go somewhere and go home
This map shows a set of actions, steps, and options to complete each action and it is a very straight forward way of describing an end-to-end journey going somewhere and coming home using the Apple Map app.
Empathy mapping
Another tool we use to approach product development in a user-centric way is using what’s known as an Empathy Map, coined by Dave Gray . This exercise is meant for teams to try and understand their users in a deeper way as they are DOING things in the product. The more you can empathize with your users’ struggles, the better equipped you can be to solve for them.
It looks like this
What this map does NOT acknowledge is the way that Seeing, Saying, Doing, and Hearing changes as the user does different things. It is a one dimentional persona artifact that is missing a critical thought-prompt: what are the users’ questions along the way?
Other variations on this concept include exercises to imagine what users are Thinking or Feeling but they don’t objectively prompt a person to imagine what types of things a user might want to know.
💡Inquired Story Map
I propose a combination of these methods into what I am loosely calling an Inquired Story Map. It is a story map that combines the power of mapping out a system, and instead of asking what they are feeling, asking “what would [user] be wondering about or thinking about?” along the way.
Imagining what questions a person might have as they complete tasks does two very important things:
Gets you out of thinking about your product in terms of its features and backlog items. After you have made a mental map of a user’s journey through your product, you can pivot into a more curious space that is not constrained by what has been planned
Gets you thinking about when in the journey someone might need to know certain things, which might actually reveal gaps in the product
Here’s what I came up with when I applied this method to the basic story map above
When I started considering what questions Susan might have at different points in the journey, I clearly noticed that I hadn’t considered to solve for some decision making that is universally true of traveling by car.
Do I need gas? Do I need it now or can I get to my destination first and then stop?
Is there parking nearby?
Is it busy there?
Can I just get directions to a highway and then I can get myself home?
These are real and common questions people have anytime they go somewhere. Yet the current user flow does not attempt to help you plan your trip GIVEN these questions.
Here’s how I turned these questions into answers in the form of feature enhancements (yes, I know there are some weird ideas here, but at least they’re backed in actual needs!)
We know more ≠ better…
…but we can see the way the future of this journey may improve by anticipating decision points along the journey. We might not promote these opportunities to the level of needing immediate action or to be required for MVP, but knowing what questions your users will have WHILE they are using your product each step in their journey will only help you answer in the form of a beautifully user-centric product.
The process distilled
Map out your user story map
Isolate a persona
At the ACTION level, have your entire team brainstorm questions this persona would have for each step
Turn the answer to those questions into features, and find the appropriate spot to place them on the map
