Cross Channel Design With Alignment Diagrams

Alignment diagrams are a class of documents that reveal the touchpoints between a customer and a business. Examples of alignment diagrams include customer journey maps, experience maps and service blueprints, among others. As I’ve written about previously, locating value is a common goal of these deliverables. Alignment diagrams show value creation in three fundamental parts:

1. First, they illustrate various aspects of user behavior—actions, thoughts, and feelings, among other aspects of their experience.
2. Alignment diagrams also reflect a company’s offerings and business process in some way.
3. Finally, the areas where the two halves meet gives rise to touchpoints between customers and an organization.

This last part — the point of interaction — is particularly useful for describing cross channel experiences.

Designers having been mapping out the touchpoints in for cross channel experience in different ways over the past years. In his article “Connecting the Dots of User Experience” Gianluca Brugnoli showcases a simple, but very effective cross-channel diagram, called a touchpoint matrix (Figure 1):

Figure 1: Touchpoint matrix by Gianluca Brugnoli (See: “Connecting the Dots of User Experience“)

“The system is the experience” is a key notion behind his argument. We must think in systems when designing cross-channel experiences. Brugnoli concludes:

Helping to reveal the structure and the many invisible connections within an interactive system, the proposed model is not only an effective tool to analyze and design the user experience, but also can help us think about the user experience in a different way.

Brugnoli’s example follows some of the alignment principles I’ve outline previously, but not all. Absent are more details about the customer experience (thoughts, feelings, etc.) as well as business activities to support the experience. Still, it’s quite a handy tool.

In another example, Tyler Tate proposes a similar matrix in his post “Cross-Channel Blueprints: A tool for modern IA“, shown in the next image (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Cross-Channel Blueprint from Tyler Tate

Like the Touchpoint Matrix, above, this blueprint is focused on the channels themselves. Here, however, we see “Shared Assets” — an important addition that points to business-side activities needed to support the experience. So it’s closer to the alignment principles than Brugnoli’s approach.

In my experience, both of the above examples can fit into a customer journey map or experience map in their entirety without causing confusing or perceived complexity. That is, stakeholders and team members find it quite intuitive and useful to see a cross channel matrix as part of an alignment diagram.

Therefore, I’m advocating the incorporation of channel-based distinctions and information, such as a Touchpoint Matrix, directly in alignment diagrams. By doing this, you get not only channel-specific information, but you can also see how this aligns with both customer goals and business goals. In this light, alignment diagrams are a suitable tool for cross channel mapping and design.

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Learn more about alignment diagrams:

• Participate in my workshop at the IA Konferenz in Essen Germany, May 10 (1/2 day workshop, in German).

Read about alignment diagrams:

• “Alignment Diagrams: Strategic UX Deliverables” (presentation at Euro IA, Paris, 2010)
• “Alignment Diagrams: Focusing the business on shared value” (Boxes and Arrows, 2011)
• “Locating Value with Alignment Diagrams” (Parsons Journal of Information Mapping, 2011)
• “Principles of Alignment Diagrams” (Blog post on Experiencing Information, 2011)

My Interview on IATV Radio

I was honored to be interviewed by Jan Jursa for IATV Radio in his last episode. Check out the interview here:

IATV Radio: Show 011 – Four Shots

I’d like to follow up here with a few of the topics we covered in this post.

1. NAVIGATION

Jan asked me directly about changes in web navigation — or in navigation in general — that I’ve noticed since the arrival of the iPhone, in particular. For sure, Designing Web Navigation is not the most up-to-date book anymore. It’s 5 years old by now: an eternity in web years. Still, many of the principles of web design I laid out in the book apply.

But since 2007 I’ve been try to identify new navigation  patterns and capture them on my blog. Here ere are some relevant posts:

• Docking Navigation Bars – Web Navigation Trend
• Scroll-Activated Dynamic Menus – Web Navigation Trend
• Static Footer Bars – Web Navigation Trend
• Forrester (Re)Emphasizes Need For Good Web Navigation
• Liquid Information Navigation – A New Paradigm?

More importantly, I’ve been investigating and teaching faceted navigation quite intensively. See my extensive list of posts on faceted navigation.

There are many more important changes I’ve had on my radar as well, but I haven’t written about the yet.

2. ALIGNMENT DIAGRAMS

I’ve been presenting, teaching and writing about alignment diagrams for the last two years. See my presentation from the Euro IA conference on Alignment Diagrams as well as a full-length article authored by Paul Kahn and myself called “Locating Value with Alignment Diagrams.” Most recently I published an article on Boxes and Arrows simply called “Alignment Diagrams.”

As Jan pointed out, I’ll be giving a workshop on alignment diagrams at the IA Konferenz in Essen, Germany on May 10. You can sign up for the half-day workshop on the conference website.

In the interview, we talked about how alignment diagrams help UX specialist do what I call “swim upstream.” By this I mean two things.

1. First, we need to “swim upstream” in project timelines. Alignment diagrams really need to be done well before a project even starts.
2. Second, alignment diagrams speak to a broader set of stakeholders. To be most effective, you should try to target them to the highest ranking audience you can.

A related topic I didn’t mention in the interview is that of the “air sandwich.” This is a term Nilofer Merchant uses in her book The New How (O’Reilly, 2009). It describes the disconnect between the top and bottom layers of an organization. Alignment Diagrams can help here, too. Read my post on the “air sandwich” and alignment diagrams for more on that.

3. INNOVATION

If first got interested in innovation in reading the works of Everett Rogers’s and his diffusion of innovation theory. Since then, I’ve been reading, writing and presenting on various innovation topics. Here is a list of posts on this blog tagged with “innovation.”

Jan asked — and rightfully so — “why do we even need innovation? Why not just design and create great products that work?” It reminded me of a quote from Scott Berkun. I wasn’t able to cite the quote precisely in the interview, but I paraphrased it fairly accurately.

Here’s the full quote from Scott in an interview for UIE:

I think innovation is overrated. Customers don’t care about how innovative you are. They just want to be happy and satisfied. And that’s about good design.

The best advice I can give is to focus on people and their problems. Few great innovators worried about anything else. The fact that they found a new idea had more to do with their passion for solving someone’s problem than anything else. Innovation is a huge distraction these days. That’s one of the myths I hope people will understand how to dispel from reading the book or attending my seminars.

Strong words from someone who has spent years researching innovation. And I couldn’t agree more.

Thanks again, Jan, for having me on IA TV Radio.  

Book Review: The Information Diet

Review of: The Information Diet, by Clay A. Johnson (O’Reilly, 2012).

• Buy The Information Diet on Amazon.
• See the website for the book.
• Follow Clay Johnson on Twitter: @cjoh

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Information Metaphors

Metaphors are than just rhetorical flourishes that make poetry sound prettier. On the contrary: linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson show us in their book Metaphors We Live By that metaphors we view the world through the lenses of metaphor. Metaphors underlie our basic conceptual understanding. They contend that:

…metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

When talking about how humans interact with information, a comparison with food and eating has been used in many cases.

Principles of Alignment Diagrams

I frequently get asked about a specific technique for creating alignment diagrams. It’s important to keep in mind that alignment diagrams aren’t a single document type, rather a class of maps that seek to visually represent and coordinate various aspects of both the customer experience and business processes.

In an article co-authored with Paul Kahn, we explain it this:

We propose the term “alignment diagrams” to describe the class of maps and diagrams that visualize touchpoints in a business process. Such diagrams are implicitly part of the current design practice. Thus our definition of alignment diagrams is less a proposition for a new visual technique than recognition of how various techniques can be seen in a new and constructive way. Alignment diagrams are constructed to reveal touchpoints and thereby contribute to the design and business process…It is the system of visual alignment that distinguishes this type of diagram.

Specific techniques for research and diagramming are important, of course, but it’s really the principles of alignment diagrams that are essential. Once you grasp these, you’ll find there range of potential ways to go about diagraming, including mental models, customer journey maps, service blueprints and more. You may even introduce variations on these standard forms or come up with your own.

The following is a list of core principles are at the heart of the alignment technique.

Top 5 Posts in 2011 on Experiencing Information

Here is a list of my top posts in 2011, in order of the number of views each became.

#1. …On Communicating Strategy for Design

19 June 2011

I’m really happy this came at the top of the list because it was by far the hardest and longest one to write. Lot’s research and re-reading went into this it. But it was fun to do, and it’s proven to be very helpful in my day job, too.

Here are the elements I found to be most significant in communicating a design strategy:

• An explicit design strategy statement of 35 words or less. This should encapsulate the objectives, as well as scope and advantage to the degree possible.
• An activity system map to show which unique set of activities you’ll undertake and their relationship with one another. This is a more detailed explanation of scope.
• A strategy canvas (or two) to show design’s advantage and unique value–both to the organization and to customers.

The subjective response to this post was good too. Here’s what one commenter had to say:

“This is an outstanding article, James. As a design strategist (or someone who does design strategy as a part of a much larger set of tasks) I took keen interest in all the information you have curated here. I cannot remember the last time I spent an hour digesting something on the Web. Really good and important read. I have sent it to my circle of smart friends. Thanks for putting this together.” (Steven Keith)

Thanks, Steven! Sometimes hard work pays off…

#2. Business Model Canvas: A Type Of Alignment Diagram

11 July 2011

The genesis of this article came from a simple realization that Alexander Osterwalder conceives of the Business Model Canvas in a similar way to how I view alignment diagrams.

To review, alignment diagrams are a class of documents that visually align aspects of customers’ interactions with a product or service. They have two halves: one part shows key elements of the customer experience; the other half illustrates business activities and how they fit into customer activity.

Alexander Osterwalders talks about the “front stage” and “back stage” sides of a business model. The front stage is all the customer-facing elements of a business. The back stage refers to the internal business processes. This division is reflected in the canvas. In this light, the business model canvas is a type alignment diagram.

For more on alignment diagrams, see my presentations and writings:

• Presentation at Euro IA – “Alignment Diagrams: Strategic UX Deliverables“
• Article co-authored with Paul Kahn - Locating Value with Alignment Diagrams” [pdf] (Parsons Journal of Information Mapping 3/2, April 2011).
• Article – “Alignment Diagrams: Focusing the business on shared value“ (Boxes and Arrows, Sept 2011)

I’m also giving a full-day workshop on Alignment Diagrams on March 15 in London as part of UX Fest.

#3. QuestionStorming – Framing The Problem

2 November 2011

Unlike #1 in the list, I fired this post off fairly quickly. It’s still quite valuable though.

I came across this technique in The Innovator’ DNA, which I was reading just at the same time we were planning an innovation workshop at USEEDS° for a client. The timing was perfect. In order to prepare myself for using the technique, I did a little research on it and was able to share what I found in a blog post.

I’m actually surprised this was only #3: judging from visibility this post got on Twitter, it felt like this would be the winner. I’m still seeing people mention this post on Twitter…

#4. Fighting The “Air Sandwich”: Aligning For Success

18 Sept 2011

I was really happy to have come across the notion of an “air sandwich” in Nilofer Merchant’s book The New How. She clearly explained and articulated what I’d observed in the companies I’ve worked for. She writes:

An Air Sandwich is, in effect, a strategy that has a clear vision and future direction on the top layer, day-to-day action on the bottom, and virtually nothing in the middle–no meaty key decisions that connect the two layers, no rich chewy center filling to align the new direction with the new actions within the company.

In the post, I don’t think I highlighted well enough how alignment diagrams can be used to address air sandwiches. It’s kinda hidden at the bottom of the text. Maybe I’ll circle back on that in another post.

#5. The Myth of Fixed-Width Layouts–Revisited

3 October 2011

This post shot up very quickly, probably because Jan Jursa (@IATV) picked it up on Twitter.

Fixed-width layouts have been a pet peeve of mine for years–ever since I wrote one of my first published pieces: “The Myth of 800×600.” Over a decade ago, working on a project for Audi, I came to the firm belief that designing a web page for a single size is a flawed practice. The web is a digital medium, and pages should be fluid and flexible. Back then–in 2001–we even built in a type of low-level responsive web design into the the Audi website. We weren’t targeting mobile devices at the time (heck, we were still looking at WAP back then), but the website did end up with 3 different optimized sizes–small, medium and large.

Anyway, I’m glad to response web design finally taking off and will be a supporter of that movement moving forward.

Honorable mention: Faceted Navigation: Grouping – An UnTapped Potential?

6 Dec 2010

OK, you noticed–this post wasn’t  from 2011. But it was close. And it also got a lot views, so I decided to include it in this recap anyway. It was also one of my favorite posts, so it gets an honorable mention.

The thing I find interesting about grouping is that there are no commercial examples that I know of it, although the Flamenco faceted search UI makes use of it. I suspect that’s because there’s little or no real business value in it. In fact, it may add complexity that could actually hurt the overall user experience of a faceted navigation system. But that’s precisely the challenge that’s fascinating to me. I’d like to see a commercial use of grouping that brings value to users and to the business.

Here’s a quote from the post:

With grouping–as with the scatter/gather interface–users can see a presentation of results in a more structured way. The theory is, structuring a results list by clustering items around a topic better reveals “aboutness” of subsets of items, and this in turn potentially increases the chance of relevance. This isn’t only true in academic settings: studies show that grouping results can be of significant benefit in broader contexts on the web.

Read the whole post for more. Or come to my workshop on Faceted Navigation on March 16 in London. I’ll be talking about grouping and many other techniques in faceted navigation.

Happy new year!

Faceted Navigation: Displaying and Forecasting Magnitude

One of the advantages of the prevailing model of faceted filtering on the web is the display of magnitude, or the size of the resulting set of items after selecting a filter value. You’ve seen this already: I’m talking about the numbers next to filter labels. This let’s you know how many things you’re going to get if you select that option.

While these calculations may be performance intensive, indication of magnitude provides valuable navigational cues to users. Seemingly trivial, this tiny bit of information can affect a user’s decision to select a filter or not. This post reviews approaches to showing magnitude in faceted navigation.

Consumer Decision Journeys

David Edelman has an interesting recent article in The Harvard Business Review entitled “Aligning with the Consumer Decision Journey.”

He writes:

Marketers need to drop the funnel metaphor to describe consumer touch points and instead study the evolving and increasingly digital consumer decision journey (CDJ). The CDJ illustrates how consumers add and subtract brands from a group under consideration during an extended evaluation phase. And purchase is no longer the end of the relationship. Now consumers often enter into an ongoing relationship with the brand during which they enjoy, advocate for and bond with it.

That feels very intuitive–even obvious–to anyone who has been working in design in the online space. But it’s important that managers and marketers are looking at the entire customer experience. If using a CDJ diagram helps, then that’s a good thing.

Decision making is a key dimension to look at in a company’s relationship with customers, for sure. Still, I’d not classify the CDJ technique as outlined by Edelman as an alignment diagram. This is primarily because it only captures one dimension of the customer experience. There’s also no mapping back to internal process within the business, and so no real alignment.

The article shows in a case study how one company used a CDJ map to instill change in the organization:

As a result of this reconceived CDJ, Global Light rethought its go-to-market approach, expanded the role of the corporate digital marketing team, and changed the nature of its customer relationships.

This is an important, non-trivial outcome of customer journey mapping in general. It builds agreement and a fosters a culture of customer-centricity internally. These effects are sometimes overlooked in such efforts, with project sponsors looking for an immediate, monetary return. It’s hard, however–if not impossible–to put a value on shared vision and culture of service in a company. A recent study on innovation by Booz & Co. shows that organizational culture is the single most-important factor the predicts how successfully a company innovates. They found that:

Spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture that supports innovation.

I’ve had success with customer journey mapping and similar techniques in building a common vision of the ideal experience. I encourage you to try experience mapping out. It may just transfer your view of the customer from the inside out to the outside in.

For more, see my list of resources for customer journey mapping on the web.

QuestionStorming – Framing The Problem

In his book The Myths of Innovation (see my review), Scott Berkun highlights the importance of framing problems creatively. Finding the right problem is as important–if not more important–as coming up with a solution quickly. Berkun writes:

Discovering problems actually requires just as much creativity as discovering solutions. There are many ways to look at any problem, and realizing a problem is often the first step toward a creative solution. To paraphrase John Dewey, the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, a properly defined problem is partially solved. (p. 128)

The start of innovation, then, shouldn’t begin with the search of the perfect solution, rather with the search for the right problem.

The Myth of Fixed-Width Layouts–Revisited

“Developing fixed-size Web pages is a fundamentally flawed practice. Not only does it result in Web pages that remain at a constant size regardless of the user’s browser size, but it fails to take advantage of the medium’s flexibility.”

The above quote is something I wrote back in March of 2001. At the time, the standard resolution to design to was 800×600, but things were changing to 1024×768. There were debates at the time as to whether web pages can be optimized for larger screens. My article, entitled “The Myth of 800×600,” essentially attacked fixed-width screen design in general. (Perhaps a better title might have been “The Myth of Fixed-Width Design.”)

I concluded that article with a prediction:

“With an increase of alternative browsing devises on the horizon, such as WebTV, public access kiosks, video gaming systems, e-Books, small handheld devices, and other nonstandard applications, the continuum of viewable browsing sizes will only expand. Never before has the demand for flexibility been greater.”

A decade later that contention seems to more true than it was back then. This post reviews the relevance of responsive web design in current practice.

Fighting The “Air Sandwich”: Aligning For Success

For a while now I’ve been observing a similar pattern in some companies I’ve worked for or had contact with: There’s often a disconnect between high-level strategies and what actually happens during implementation. Execs don’t get what they want, and employees work hard on projects that ultimately fail.

The metaphor I use is that of a “cliff”: stakeholders throw vague ideas over “a cliff.” They quickly plummet downward for individual contributors to execute. And no one seems to notice the gaping hole in the middle, between the top and the bottom. Mapping, modelling, coordinating, testing hypotheses, iterating, revising, and above all co-creating seem to get left out.

Happily, Nilofer Merchant in her book The New How (O’Reilly, 2009) has articulated this phenomenon much better than I have. She too has observed this disconnect between the top and bottom layers of an organization. It’s what she calls an “air sandwich.” Nilofer writes:

An Air Sandwich is, in effect, a strategy that has a clear vision and future direction on the top layer, day-to-day action on the bottom, and virtually nothing in the middle–no meaty key decisions that connect the two layers, no rich chewy center filling to align the new direction with the new actions within the company.

Also see Merchant’s promo video on Amazon.com for a brief explanation with cartoon representation of the air sandwich.

The metaphor is reminiscent of the “Where’s The Beef” campaign Wendy’s hamburg chain restaurants launched decades ago. In our case, the top bun would be the high-level strategy; the bottom bun is execution and implementation. And there’s nothing in between–no beef.

I was reminded of the “air sandwich” again when reading an article by Alexander Osterwalder (of business model canvas fame) and Yves Pigneur (see: “An e-Business Model Ontology for Modelling e-Business“). They discuss three levels of business structure: The planning or strategy level, the architectural or business model level, and the implementation or process level.

Here’s the diagram from the article illustrating these levels:

Figure 1: Levels of an organization (Osterwalder and Pigneur)

Notice that middle level. That’s the one that gets left out. That’s where the air sandwich comes from: a lack of focus on the architectural level. This layer is like an equation or a series of IF-THEN statements. It’s the governing logic of how the business is to function and what employees are to do. Without this algorithm in place, folks are left to improvise or make assumptions. Osterwalder and Pigneur argue that an explicit business model provides a framework for architecting and managing the business logic.

Regardless of what you call it–a “cliff,” an “air sandwich,” or the “architectural level”–the pattern is the same: senior management complains that their brilliant ideas don’t get implemented properly: “If we could only get execution right, we’d be better off.” Lower-level managers and individual contributors, in turn, groan about how stakeholders don’t “get it.” They don’t buy into those “brilliant ideas,” and they don’t believe in the direction set from above.

What’s the answer? Should we expect execs to roll up their sleeves and detail everything out? Not exactly–that would quickly become micro-management. Still, instead of crapping bricks of strategic poo from their ivory-lined corner offices on the heads of the mere mortals who implement the stuff, execs can make sure their vision and plans are broken down and architected for execution. In other words, they need to make sure the middle layer is aligned upward and downward and that there is no “air sandwich.”

For instance, execs can engage the bottom more frequently and actively to gather input into what will actually work. Often it’s people closest to the customer or the production line or a service partner that will know where the showstoppers may lie. Instead of creating a strategy in behind closed doors and then telling the rest of the company what their future is, execs should co-create the strategy with a variety of sources of input from all levels.

But from the bottom up there are things that can be done too. In particular, applying design thinking to the architectural level can provide a different picture of a given situation. Instead of griping about a lack of vision or direction, use your skills to draw a picture of the architectural layer. Literally.

You may have already heard me beating the drum about “alignment diagrams,” for instance. This class of document provides a structured overview to some of the middle layers of a business. More importantly, they bring a strong customer perspective into the discussion and align this with business activity.

In the end, the fighting the “air sandwich” needs to be done from all directions–from the top and from the bottom.

Some may say, “We don’t have time to plan every detail” or “We need to be first-to-market on this one” and “Let’s just start executing without all the planning.” But combating the air sandwich makes execution more efficient in the long run. Simply put, it makes economic sense to spend time getting the business logic right before going off to execute a plan. “If you get the thinking right, the doing is much easier,” to quote Ms Merchant again.

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See my upcoming workshops on Alignment Diagrams:

1. Thursday 22 Sept 2011, Prague, CZ - Part of Euro IA 2011
2. Thursday 3 Nov 2011, London, UK – Part of UX Fest London

Also see some articles and presentations on alignment diagrams:

• Presentation at the Euro IA Conference 2010, Paris
• “Locating Value with Alignment Diagrams,” co-authored with Paul Kahn, Parsonas Journal of Information Mapping, April 2011.
• “Alignment Diagrams,” Boxes and Arrows, September 2011.

UX Fest in London – Workshops With William Hudson and James Kalbach

Our first UX Fest London in February 2011 was a great success. It included four courses, two from William Hudson and two by me.

For the November this year, we have added two brand new, thought-provoking workshops: on on agile requirements (William Hudson) and one on alignment diagrams (James Kalbach).

Here’s the full program with links to William’s site:

• Tuesday 1 November, Agile User Experience & UCD (William Hudson)
• Wednesday 2 November, Agile Requirements (William Hudson)
• Thursday 3 November, Alignment Diagrams (James Kalbach)
• Friday 4 November, Faceted Search & Beyond (James Kalbach)

Online registration for UX Fest is now open. Be sure to take advantage of the 4-for-the-price-of-3 special.

All courses are from 9:30-5:00 at Wallacespace, St Pancras, London WC1H 9PN in central London. (NOTE: this is not the Covent Garden location for Wallacespace). Lunch and refreshments will be served.

TESTIMONIALS

Here’s what former participants said about our workshops:

About William’s courses:

• “Excellent, well paced”
• “Fully met my needs on how to use UX techniques in Agile development”
• “Instructor was very, very good at presenting and very knowledgeable”

About James’ courses:

• “Highly valuable and relevant strategies … in a clear, friendly and engaging manner”
• “Lively, engaging, coherent style”
• “Practical and clear”
• “James demonstrates excitement for his profession and, with this, opens new perspectives for work in web design.”
• “The content was well prepared and very practical through the numerous examples.”

 

Business Model Design: Disruption Case Study

I’ve been working with Alexanders Osterwalder’s approach to business model generation via the business model canvas (BMC) for a few years now. The canvas is straight forward to use, which is the beauty of it: you “get it” right away. But it does take some practice to identify and capture the various elements. It’s more of a craft than a science.

To sharpen my skills I decided to deconstruct the Xiameter business model and compare its parent, Dow Corning–just for fun. (You have the right to now say, “Get a life, Kalbach”). My starting point was an article outlining the structure of Xiameter: “Dow Corning’s Big Pricing Gamble“ by Loren Gary. I combed the text for the 9 elements of the BMC, jotted them down on paper, and then entered them into the canvas.

The image below (Figure 1) shows my analysis using the iPad app for the BMC. The GREEN notes represent Dow Corning’s core business. The ORANGE notes show the Xiameter model. Interestingly, Xiameter seems to have had an effect back on the core business model, according to the article. These aspects are shown in BLUE notes.

Figure 1: Comparison of Dow Corning’s core business to Xiameter using the Business Model Canvas (Click to enlarge)

The new Xiameter channel is a textbook example of disruptive innovation. Clayton Christensen illustrates the basic dynamics of distruption in a now well-know diagram:

Figure 2: Clayton Christensens illustration of disruption

Dow Corning recognized that it was overshooting its market. Overshooting is one of the first signs of a market ready for disruption. Scott Anthony et al write about overshooting in The Innovator’s Guide to Growth:

At the heart of the disruptive innovation model is the concept of overshooting, that is, providing too much performance for a given group of customers. Remember, the model holds that companies innovate faster than people’s lives can change to take advantage of the advances those companies provide. As companies innovate, products or services that were previously not good enough become perfectly adequate; ultimately, they become too good for a given group of customers. (p. 65)

(See my full review of The Innovator’s Guide to Growth in a previous post).

As the Xiameter case study article shows, Dow Corning seems to have recognized overshooting:

In the early 1990s, however, Dow Corning noticed an emerging trend toward commoditization in some of its markets. This meant that as specific products matured, the priorities of clientele within them shifted from wanting help with innovation to wanting to keep costs low. …

This change in what some customers valued—and the consequent decline in profit margins within those market segments—led Dow Corning to conclude that the basis of competition had shifted in parts of the industry. Facing the possibility that such a shift might spread, the company realized it required a more needs-based approach to customer segmentation. Its existing business model, which emphasized selling technical assistance and product testing on top of its core products, ignored price-conscious customers. To meet their needs—and to keep them from migrating to other, less-expensive providers—Dow Corning would have to devise a radically lower cost structure that would allow it to profit solely from selling products.

Overshooting is a key sign of a market ready for disruption. But don’t confuse breakthrough innovation with disruption. A breakthrough is the next, biggest, better product or service in an existing market. It’s the fifth blade on a razor or the Airbus 380. Or, see Kohler’s numi toilets–another example of a breakthrough product design, with a heated seat, feet warming, music and a remote control. But by definition these aren’t disruptive.

Disruptive innovations are more convenient, cheaper and easier to use, generally targeting previously underserved market segments. Think: Flip video camera, eBay or Zopa (a peer-to-peer lending service), as well as Skype and Ryan Air as disruptions. Xiameter is also a disruptive innovation.

The amazing part of Xiameter, however, is that Dow Corning distrupted itself. The fear of self cannibalization is extremely difficult to overcome in most companies, particular those as large and traditional as Dow. And that fear is precisely what causes the innovator’s dilemma. Dow overcame this fear and didn’t let entrants take that piece of their pie, as the chart above (Figure 2) show what usually happens.

My big take-away from this exercise is in the power of visualizing and diagramming all of these elements. Go read the article article that I reversed engineered (Here’s the link again–opens in new window); then come back here and compare what you read to the diagram.

Which explains the big picture better? Don’t get me wrong: the author of the article writes well, and it’s a clear story he tells. But you don’t get nearly the same sense of interlocking dependencies and overall logic you get from the text as you do from the canvas.

More importantly, the BMC let’s you design your business. You can quickly “sketch” multiple directions or variations. If they don’t work out, crumple it up and go back to the drawing board. That’s the power of it: iterative prototyping. With the BMC, you can apply design thinking to the innovation of a business model. It’s a far better better way than trying to detail a model out in text-based report or description.

Visualizing abstract business concepts really helps solve problems. I’ve been beating that drum for the last year or so, ever since I gave a presentation on “Alignment Diagrams” at the Euro IA conference last year. (See also the article Paul Kahn and I co-authored on alignment diagrams: “Locating Value with Alignment Diagrams“). Alignment diagrams are a class of document that includes such things as customer journey maps, service blueprints and mental model diagrams.

In a previous post, I suggest that the BMC is a type of alignment diagram. The elements on the right side represent customer-facing aspects. Alexander Osterwalder calls this the “front stage.” The fields on the left represent business-related aspects, or the “back stage.” In the middle is the “value proposition.” It’s this type of alignment between the back stage and front stage that’s often missing in business logic. While no silver bullet, the BMC and alignment diagrams can help bring clarity.

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NOTE: I’m giving two workshops this year on alignment diagrams:
1. Alignment Diagrams, Euro IA, 22 Sept 2011, Prague (1/2 day workshop)
2. Alignment Diagrams, part of UX Fest, 3 Nov, London (Full-day workshop)

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***DISCLAIMER: I have no association with or interest in either Xiameter or Dow Corning, nor do I have first-hand knowledge of their business models and thier success. The above analysis is based solely on the text in the article cited. 

Enterprise Business Motivation Model – Mapping The Business

The business world is becoming increasingly complex. Studies in business complexity show that leaders are unable to cope: they are pulled in different directions and unable to focus [1, 2]. Conflicting priorities, competing business units, and an inability to find attractive markets are some of the top issues that contribute to this modern condition.

As a result, many companies lack coherence. Part of the problem is that there are too many pieces to puzzle. Globalization, digitization, automatization, outsourcing, crowd sourcing: navigating the possibilities business have at their disposal these days is a wicked problem.

We then see these companies pass this complexity on to consumers. Customers get bounced from service provider to service provider or from department to department. No one takes control or, worse, they blame each other.

Designers try to reduce this complexity for users of the products and services they create. We’re naturally good at empathizing with customers, understanding their motiviations and needs, and translating this into a concept for an offering. One important tool designers rely on frequently are diagrams: flowcharts, concept maps, interaction models and the like. Often these are for design purposes, but used to describe business contexts, they can take on a new role.

While no silver bullet, diagrams can help provide insight into complex situations. Visualizing all of the components of a process or system provides both a compactness of information and an immediacy of understanding. Maps help us see relationships and connect the dots. It’s this big picture that is often missing in business thinking.

Enterprise Business Motivation Model (EBMM) is a techique to identify and visualize the disparate elements of a business. It’s a big picture view of an organization. It includes a variety of elements, and mapping out in more details is surely a task in and of itself.

Here a picture of the highest-level of the EBMM. (Click for full view–opens in new window)

(Unfortunately, there is no identification of Design as a core business function)

Based on my presentation at the Euro IA conference in Paris in 2010, Paul Kahn and I wrote about alignment diagrams in a longer article (See”Locating Value with Alignment Diagrams“). The EBMM is NOT an alignment diagram by our definition of the phrase because it doesn’t account for any customer behavior. However, elements from the EBMM could be used to describe the business portion of an alignment diagram. For instance, if your alignment diagram has horizontal “swimlanes” of information that are visually aligned in the map, aspects like “Business Unit,” “Business Process,” “Data Object,” and “Initiatives” could be separate rows.

The interesting part of this to me is that I believe people in design disciplines have the necessary skills to do this kind of work–to map out businesses and interactions. We’re good at investigating and uncovering complex problems that may be otherwise not “visible” and making these tangible. I’d like to see more of this kind of work and thinking come from the design community. We can use our design thinking skills to help solve business problems.

As Luke Wroblewski’s commented on his blog years ago:

The same communication skills that help designers create effective visual and interaction designs for products can also play a significant role elsewhere in the product development process especially during early strategic work. …

… Especially early on in the product development process, design artifacts are able to create buy-in for a product vision, provide market context, or illuminate data, processes, goals, and the impact of decisions.

…designers have the skills needed to communicate and persuade but few of them utilize these skills for business visualization. Especially early on in the product development process, design artifacts are able to create buy-in for a product vision, provide market context, or illuminate data, processes, goals, and the impact of decisions.

I won’t be talking about EBMMs in my upcoming workshop at the Euro IA Conference in Prague on alignment diagrams, but I will be discussing some of the points I just mentioned in more detail. We’ll also look at some of the mechanics of creating alignment diagrams. Registration for the workshop is still open and there are spots left.

BTW, the early bird price for the conference itself has been extended until Sept 4. Sign up! Luke Wroblewski is our keynote speaker–you won’t want to miss that!

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[1] IBM, “Capitalizing on Complexity,” (2010). [http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/]

[2] Booz & Co, “Executives Say They’re Pulled in Too Many Directions and That Their Company’s Capabilities Don’t Support Their Strategy,” (Feb 2011). [http://www.booz.com/global/home/press/article/49007867]

WORKSHOP: Web Navigation and Faceted Search Design – Saturday Oct 22 in NYC

I’m happy to announce I’ll be giving a one-day workshop on some my favorite topics in New York City:

• What: “Web Navigation and Faceted Search Design”
• When: Saturday October 22, 9:00-5:00
• Where: General Assembly, 902 Broadway, NY, NY, 10010

General Assembly is hosting the event. You can register online at their website.

The first half of the day will cover various aspects of web navigation design. The second half will focus specifically on faceted search. Here’s a list of the topics covered:

• Principles of navigation - We’ll look at principles such as transitional volatility, banner blindness, and the scent of information.
• Mechanisms and types of navigation - Mechanisms are the basic building blocks of navigation systems. We’ll review and analyze a wealth of examples.
• Cores and Paths - You’ll apply many of the principles from throughout the day with a modern technique called Cores and Paths. This turns the normal approach to navigation design on its head—from the inside out.
• Analysis and implementation of facets – You’ll learn how to identify, document and implement facets with a clear framework.
• Interface design using facets – You’ll learn about the layout, display, and interaction with facets in detail. Together, we’ll examine numerous real-world examples.
• Advanced topics – You will also be exposed to special topics in faceted search design, including SEO, selecting multiple values, grouping, and more.

See the full workshop description for more details.

This is some of my best material, and I’m looking forward to the event.

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ROI Of Faceted Navigation?

Faceted navigation is widespread on the web (a.k.a faceted search and faceted browse). It’s become an expected standard. I’ve written several posts on the subject and also have a popular workshop on faceted navigation. (Next one: 22 Oct 2011 in NYC). Yet we really don’t know much about the ROI of faceted navigation. Or do we?

I’ve only been able to find a few studies or case studies reporting a measureable ROI of faceted navigation. There are lots of variables in play, and definitively showing measureable gains directly to faceted navigation can be tricky. But a simple before-and-after comparison should be possible.

One helpful sources is Endeca’s case studies. Examples of ROI include:

• Kiddicare.com: 100% increase in conversion rates; 100% increase in sales; Additional 100% increase in conversion rates with PowerReviews
• AutoScout 24: 5% increase in lead generation to dealers; 70% decrease in no results found
• Otto Group: 130% increase in conversion rates; Doubled conversion rates for visitors originating from pay-per-click marketing programs; Search failure rate decreased from over 33% to 0.5%

If you have such data or evidence in any form, please let me and others know about by commenting here. Note I’m not talking about studies that show how efficient faceted navigation is in terms of interaction or time on task (such as the ones reported here): I’m looking for hard evidence on ROI in real world situations.

It’s a positive sign that so many websites have faceted navigation these days: there must be something “right” about it. But why have so many site owners and stakeholders funded and implemented faceted navigation systems? What’s the actual return against the cost of implementation and maintenance?

Some logical arguments include combinations of the following:

• Conversion: Customers can’t buy what they can’t find: Findability is critical for ecommerce sites.  A well-designed navigation plays a key role in getting people to the information or products you want to see. This ultimately helps you sell products or ideas. Faceted navigation has been shown to improve findability, in general.
• Efficiency: Employees lose productivity when navigation is inefficient: These days company intranets can be enormous. The time to find information impacts employee productivity. Even the smallest increase in navigational efficiency can have huge returns for a large corporation if you multiple it by thousands of employees. Faceted navigation is efficient.
• Confidence: Faceted navigation increases information scent: Revealing facet values gives users better insight into the type of terms and language used on the site. They are then able to match their information need with the content of the site, giving them confidence as the navigate forward through a given collection. This keeps them on the site and away from the customer support hotline.
• “Aboutness”: Facets show the overall semantic make-up of a collection: Faceted metadata–the values associated with a collection of documents or products–give clues into the “aboutness” of that collection. Facets convey the breadth and type of a results list, for instance. This can help get to their target information better.
• Reduced Uncertainty: Users don’t have to specify precise queries: With faceted navigation, users don’t rely on formulating precise keyword searches alone to find information. Instead, they can enter broad searches and use the facets in a flexible way to refine the initial query. This gives confidence in being comprehensive and reduces uncertainty in information seeking in general, as well as removes the frustration of finding no results.
• Navigation: Browsing categories provides a different experience than keyword search: Jared Spool and his colleagues found that people tend to continue shopping more often when navigating than after doing a direct keyword search: people tend to continue browsing—and buying—when they can successfully navigate to the products they want to purchase. Sure, keyword searching may also get them there, but that experience is different. He writes in an article entitled “Users Continue After Category Links” (Dec 2001):
• Apparently, the way you get to the target content affects whether you’ll continue looking or not. In a recent study of 30 users, we found that if the users used Search to locate their target content on the site, only 20% of them continued looking at other content after they found the target content. But if the users used the category links to find their target, 62% continued browsing the site. Users who started with the category links ended up looking at almost 10 times as many non-target content pages as those who started with Search.

A well-designed faceted navigation system won’t solve all your problems. But because navigation is so central to the basic web experience, it stands to reason that that are financial implications involved. What are they exactly?

Again, if you have any support for the above contentions or have another argument around the benefits of faceted navigation, please let me know.