Balancing Value with Alignment Diagrams

I’m proud to be publishing a short article on alignment diagrams in Touchpoint: The Journal of Service Design (vol 4, no. 3, pp. 70-73) called “Balancing Value with Alignment Diagrams.”

Touchpoint isn’t available online, but you can download the PDF of my article here.

Here are some excerpts from the text:

We can view value creation as an equation with two halves: on the one side, there’s the business perspective, including service provision mechanisms and the benefits the organisation obtains; on the other, we find the customer perspective, including the customer’s experience
and the added value a service brings to a market. Accordingly, alignment diagrams also have two parts that mirror these perspectives. Where the activities of the two halves meet gives rise to touchpoints – where value lies, as illustrated in the diagram below.

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Strategic and tactical projects within any organisation often witness conflicting perspectives. By focusing on value creation – the overlap between customer activity and business offerings – we potentially harmonise this conflict. This is first step in achieving co-creation
and positioning an organisation to collaborate with customers.

While no silver bullet, alignment diagrams instil a sense of balance back into corporate thinking. At a minimum, they start a conversation towards coherence, bringing actions, thoughts and people together while fostering consensus. More importantly, they focus on creating value – for both the customer and the business. Moving forward, businesses will need to look at value as a balanced the equation. Alignment diagrams are
diagnostic tools already in the design repertoire that let us do just that, bringing new relevance design work. By understanding the underlying principles of alignment, designers can leverage their skills in ways that better serve businesses and ultimately help redefine value creation.

Download the full text of “Balancing Value with Alignment Diagrams.” Touchpoint (4/3), 2013.

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Top 5 Posts in 2012 on Experiencing Information

2012 was a relatively slow year for me in terms of quantity of new blog posts. But I was able to capture and share some of my best thoughts this year.

Here are quotes that summarize each of the top 5 posts by number of views in 2012, in reverse order of popularity:

#5 – Incremental Innovation Is Underrated

Some business stakeholders are swinging for the fences in their innovation efforts:they want the big wins. And rightfully so: reaching for the stars keeps the company pushing forward, beyond what it can currently deliver. This inspires and motivates employees and management alike. But sometimes this quest for the next biggest and best thing overshadows everything else.

Companies need incremental innovation, breakthroughs and disruptions alike. To do this, there must be a comprehensive innovation program in place to channel attention and effort in the right direction.

The point is that incremental ideas shouldn’t be neglected: they are profitable and can fund your big idea projects. And they also provide a stepping stone toward game changers via the adjacent possible.

#4 – Principles of Alignment Diagrams

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.

#3 – Clarifying Innovation: Four Zones of Innovation

I’m proposing a 2-dimensional picture of innovation:

• The y-axis indicates the degree of technological progress an innovation brings with it. Moving from low to high along this line indicates improving existing capabilities, services and products.
• The x-axis shows the impact an innovation has on the market, also from low to high. This usually entails new business models or reaching underserved target groups.

This gives rise to four distinct zones of innovation:

• Incremental innovations involve modest changes to existing products and services. These are enhancements that keep a business competitive, such as new product features and service improvements.
• Breakthrough innovation refers to large technological advances that propel an existing product or service ahead of competitors. This is often the result of research and development labs (R&D), who are striving for the next patentable formula, device and technology.
• Disruptive innovation is a term coined by Clayton Christensen. In his best-selling book The Innovator’s Dilemma he shows that disruptive innovations “result is worse product performance, at least in the near-term. [They] bring to a market a very different value proposition than had been available previously” (p. xviii).
• Game-changing innovation transform markets and even society. These innovations have a radical impact on how humans act, think and feel in some way.

#2 – Cross Channel Design with Alignment Diagrams

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.

#1 – The Project Canvas

Defining a project in its earliest stages is like hitting a golf ball: if the face of your club is slightly tilted , you’ll end up slicing the ball as it travels down the green. Likewise, small miscalculations at the beginning of projects can have massive consequences later on.

Part of the problem is that the logic of a project definition is invisible. You can’t “see“ project goals or risks, for instance. Sure, you can write them down as text. But long documents – if they get read at all – tend to get lost in the shuffle as the project unfolds.

What’s more, a written description of project elements doesn’t expose relationships between them. The big picture can fade quickly as work and deadlines pile up.

Here is a tool to help you get a quick, but broad definition of a project in a single overview. It’s called the Project Canvas.  You can download it here: Download the Project Canvas v1.0 (PDF)

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)

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!

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.

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.

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. 

Business Model Canvas: A Type Of Alignment Diagram

In my presentation at Euro IA 2010 in Paris, I proposed the term “alignment diagrams” to refer to the class of documents currently found in design practice that do a similar thing: they visually align multiple facets of customer behavior with business activity in a single graphical overview. Here’s my presentation:

Together with Paul Kahn, I published an article outlining alignment diagrams in more detail. See “Locating Value with Alignment Diagrams” [pdf] (Parsons Journal of Information Mapping 3/2, April 2011).

Examples of alignment diagrams include customer journey maps, mental model diagrams, and service blueprints. These are often employed by practioners in creative design disciplines to conceive of better products and services.

But ultimately an effective use of alignment diagrams can have a strategic impact on the business. “Use your design thinking skills and ability to map out complex, abstract concepts to inform the business,” I urged the audience in my presentation. Or, consider what Paul and I wrote:

The alignment technique supports the increasing importance of design disciplines in business success.Alignment diagrams, then, can potentially help information architects, user experience professionals, and service designers have a greater impact on the direction of final business solutions.

I’d now like to put another example into the alignment diagram bucket: the “business model canvas” (BMC). Developed by Alexander Osterwalder, the BMC is a tool for helping business owners and stakeholders discover and prototype different ways to make profit. How to use it is outlined in the best-selling book Business Model Generation. There’s also a series of tools available online as well as an iPad app for the BMC.

Here’s the BMC (click to enlarge):

When presenting this, Alexander 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:

• Front stage elements include: customers, relationship, channels and revenue (the right half of the canvas)
• Back stage includes: partners, key activities, key resources and cost (the left half of the canvas)

Right in the middle is “value” or the offering.

The business model canvas, then, is primarily set up to capture both customer aspects and business concerns in order to create value for both sides–in other words an alignment diagram. Compare to what Paul and I write:

It is the system of visual alignment that distinguishes this type of diagram. By aligning the user’s experiences with the business offers the diagram identifies and highlights the intersections where value can be located.

The BMC reflects such a system of visual alignment.

However, unlike other examples of alignment diagrams I mentioned above, the BMC is a tool and not a deliverable. It’s blank at first and used to brainstorm. Sure, you could use it to capture an existing business model. But it’s real value is letting business stakeholders explore alternatives on paper. Still, we can refer to a BMC as a type of alignment diagram.

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Join My Workshop On Alignment Diagrams:

I’ll be giving a half-day workshop at the Euro IA 2011 conference in Prague this September on alignment diagrams. We’ll be focusing customer journey maps and mental models (but not business model canvases).

See my description of the workshop on this blog.

Registration is open online as well. 

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Customer Journey Mapping Resources On The Web

• Last updated: 17 September 2011
• Originally published: 10 May 2010

Service design can be traced back to the writings of G. Lynn Shostack in the early 80s. [1, 2] Though not new, there is a lot of talk these days about service design. In the past 5 or so years we’ve seen a service design renaissance, so to speak.

Literature on service design is thin(ish), relatively speaking (i.e., compared to other disciplines like psychology), but does extend back for decades. The Köln International School of Design (KISD), for one, established service design as a field of study in 1991. The Service Design Network has held two annual service design conferences on the subject so far, reflecting the recent burgeoning interest in the field.

Service design is by nature interdisciplinary, drawing attention from people in sales, marketing, product management, product design, interaction design, and user experience. Take the Information Architecture Konferenz in Germany in 2010, for instance: the theme is “Service. Design. Thinking,” with talks focused on service design.

A cornerstone deliverable in service design, in general, is a map of the service process. Shostack refers to “service blueprints” in her articles 30 years ago. Service blueprints are still a widely-used approach to visualizing the steps and phases in the service.

More recently, “customer journey maps” (CJMs) have emerged, which are very similar to service blueprints. In fact, you could contend that blueprint and CJMs are  the same. Arguably, however, CJMs tend to take a more customer-centric view of the service. For instance, CJMs show things like customer pain points, moments of truth, and other emotional aspects, including brand perception. Service blueprints do not necessarily include this type of information. Instead, then tend to illustrate backstage processes in a more provider-centric view of the service.

Typical elements of CJMs include:

• Customer actions, usually broken into chronological phases of some kind
• Goals and needs at each step in the process
• Moments of truth, or areas of particular importance in the overall customer experience
• Pain points, gaps and disconnects in service
• Brand impact, satisfaction, and emotional responses
• Business touchpoints and process, including roles, systems and departments of the provider
• Existing services and opportunities for improvement

Other descriptive and contextual elements may also appear, such as quotes and photos.

Writing for Forrester reports, Bruce Tempkin stresses the relevance and importance of CJMs. He writes in a blog post:

…companies need to use tools and processes that reinforce an understanding of actual customer needs. One of the key tools in this area is something called a customer journey map… Used appropriately, these maps can shift a company’s perspective from inside-out to outside-in.

Yet, there are few resources on CJMs and how to create them, particularly on the web. (There isn’t even a Wikipedia entry on CJMs.) I’ve just completed a CJM project with my company, and in preparing for it have gathered a list of resources on the subject.

Below is a list of English resources on the web for CJMs. The focus of the list is on CJM as a document and deliverable, and how to create them. It doesn’t include general resources about serivce design and, with one exception, doesn’t include resources about service blueprints. The resources that begin with an asterisks are recommended starting points with particularly good practical information.

Customer Journey Map Resources On The Web:

Bob Apollo. “Understanding Your Prospect’s Buying Journey,” Inflexion Point [website] (last visited May 2010).

The consultants at Inflexion Point examine the B2B buying process in particular. They offer a generic buying journey that includes moments of truth, as well as tips on how to create a journey map. This is not a how-to resource, but discusses aspects of CJMs in detail with good examples.

* Mary Jo Bitner, Amy L. Ostrom & Felicia N. Morgan. “Service Blueprinting: A Practical Technique for Service Innovation,” Working Paper, Center for Leadership Services, Arizona State University [pdf] (2007).

This is the only expection to this list of resources on CJM that is primarily about service blueprints. This 24-page paper is very detailed and includes practical information. “Service blueprints allow all members of the organization to visualize an entire service and its underlying support processes, providing common ground from which critical points of customer contact, physical evidence, and other key functional and emotional experience clues can be orchestrated.”

Cabinet Office. “Customer Journey Mapping Guidance,” Website (last visited May 2010).

This site provides log-in details to a SharePoint with excellent presentations and documents on customer journey mapping. A lot of the materials mirror the reports commissioned by the Cabinet Office by Oxford Strategic Marketing (see below). Most of the documents are PowerPoints. Log-in details:

To access the detailed guidance and the online training modules please go to sharepoint.oxfordsm.co.uk/gjm. You will need to enter the following:

Username: occ\Gjm
Password: Govjmtes12*

Tracy Caldwell. “A Route To Insights,” Kable (Feb 2010).

This is a long-ish article summarizing CJMs, in general, and focuses in particular on recent advances in the public sector in the UK. The author points to the Cabinet Office’s resources and discusses the Stoke-on-Trent case study.

Dale Cobb. “Creating Your Own Customer Journey Map,” Servant Selling [blog] (Jan 2008).

This is a very short post, but it includes a CJM template with explanations of the different elements of a CJM.

Customer Faithful. “Customer Journey Mapping and the Experience Pulse,” Presentation [pdf] (January 2010).

A brief overview of CJMs with a few examples.

Department of Health (UK). “Improving the service from start to finish: customer journey mapping,” DH Care Networks [website] (Nov 2009).

This is a short article outlining the benefits of CJMs and the steps to create one. There are two documents at the end that point to the Oxford Strategic Marketing approach to CJMs.

Mel Edwards, “Customer Experience Mapping,” blog post on Desonance (June 2010).

This post includes a unique example of what the author calls a “customer experience map.” This is similar to a CJM, and seems to have many additional facets of information about the experience, such as triggers and delight opportunities. He gives some practical tips on creating them, as well as argument for when and why to use an experience map. There is a related post on service blueprints.

Engine Group. “Customer Journey Mapping,“ Engine Service Design, Methods [website] (last visited May 2010).

Brief overview of CJMs in the form of a sale pitche for Engine’s services. There are links to case studies and images of CJM deliverables.

Experience Solutions. “Customer Journey Mapping,” Website (last visited May 2010).

This is a brief marketing pitch for Experience Solutions’ services, but it includes an example of a customer journey map as PDF. It doesn’t include much how-to information.

* Joel Flom. “The Value of Customer Journey Maps: A UX Designer’s Personal Journey,” UX Matters (Sept 2011).

This is a good case story around the use of CJMs at Boeing. There’s also a good illustration of a CJM with an interesting layout and form. Look at this article if you need some arguments for convincing others to use CJMs. The author was first skeptical of their use, but concludes: “By producing journey maps that illustrate an optimal customer experience, we enable stakeholders and executives to identify, prioritize, and maintain focus on the changes that matter.”

Jon Harvey. “Customer Journey Mapping: New Workshop,” Jon Harvey Associates [blog] (April 2010).

Jon Harvey follows the Stoke-on-Trent implementation of CJM on his blog. This post links to other posts on the subject he’s written. Not much practical information.

Hawdale Associates. “Customer Journey Mapping,” YouTube Video [2:31] (March 2010).

This short video does a good job at explaining CJMs and related deliverables. It’s mostly a marketing pitche for Hawdale Associates and doesn’t include how-to information.

Jeff Howard. “Using Diary Studies for Customer Journey Mapping,” Design for Service [blog] (Dec 2009).

This is a nice, short blog post focusing on a specific way to get at data needed to create a CJM: diary studies. There is little about CJMs themselves, but it’s worth getting some ideas around diary studies.

Hetal Joshi. “Customer Journey Mapping: The Road To Success,” Cognizant CRM Insights [pdf] (2009).

This is a short 4-page article on the benefits and process of CJMs. “Customer journey mapping is a systematic exploration of a customer’s interactions with yourorganization across all channels and throughout their lifecycle.”

Valeria Maltoni. “3 Steps to Mapping the Customer Journey,” Conversation Agent [blog] (June 29).

Short article about CJMs: “Mapping the customer journey means visualizing how customers interact with you and your business across multiple channels and touch points at each stage of their involvement with your service.”

The Marketing Spot. “Build Your Marketing Plan Part 4: Customer Experience Map,” SlideShare Presentation (2008).

A presentation with audio on CJM. Some interesting examples are included.

Peter Martin. “Customer Journey Mapping,” SlideShare Presentation (April 2010).

A presentation with enough bullet points to follow most of it. There are good examples of CJMs included.

* Mulberry Consulting. “Mulberry Consulting CJM Presentation,“ White Paper [pdf] (2009).

The authors write: “Customer Journey Mapping provides a clear picture of your customers’ interactions with you at every stage of the lifecycle.” This presentation provides a broad overview of CJM but includes some how-to tips. There are lots of good examples of CJMs.

* Arne van Oosterom. “Mapping out customer experience excellence: 10 steps to customer journey mapping,” MyCustomer.com (March 2010).

This article is a great resource for both a general discussion of why CJMs are important as well as practical information to complete them. Mr van Oosterom is a leader in the field and breaks the process down to 10 steps, as the title suggestions. He writes: “A customer journey map is built up layer by layer. We start ‘above water’, with the customer and slowly dive deeper and deeper into the organisational structures and context. The tool can be used with customers or management, employees and other stakeholder or, even better, in a mix.” See also the Customer Journey LAB from DesignThinkers, Arne’s company in Amsterdam.

* Oxford Strategic Marketing. “Customer Journey Mapping: An Introduction” and “Customer Journey Mapping: A Practicioner’s Guide,” Cabinet Office website (Sept 2009, last visited May 2010)

This is a series of documents written by the Oxford Strategic Marketing commissioned by the UK’s Cabinet Office and is perhaps one of the most complete resources on the web on CJM. Section 4 of the 6-part practicioner’s guide is devoted to the process of creating CJMs with step-by-step instructions. They define customer journey mapping as: “..the process of tracking and describing all the experiences that customers have as they encounter a service or set of services, taking into account not only what happens to them, but also their responses to their experiences. Used well, it can reveal opportunities for improvement and innovation in that experience, acting as a strategic tool to ensure every interaction with the customer is as positive as it can be.” An article in the Guardian Public discusses this report from the Cabinet Office.

Quality Improvement Agency. “Customer Journey Mapping,” White Paper [pdf] (2007).

This resource provides a brief overview with some of the benefits of CJMs, and it includes an example and template of a CJM.

* Adam Richardson. “Using Customer Journey Maps to Improve Customer Experience,” Harvard Business Blog (Nov 2010) and “Touchpoints Bring the Customer Experience to Life,” Harvard Business Blog (Dec 2010).

This pair of articles from Frog Design expert Adam Richardson covers some basics of CJMs. The second one dives deeper into touchpoint analysis and provides some good tips and examples of what to potentially look for and map. The important thing about these articles is that they appear in a leading business venue. Pointing to these can help get the attention of stakeholders at different levels.

Stacy Surla. “Service Design and the Customer’s Journey,” Fit and Finish [blog] (April 2010).

Brief blog post that summarizes some presentations at the IA Summit 2010 related to service design. There are a couple of examples of service blueprints from Adaptive Path included in the post.

Roberta Tassi. “Tools: Customer Journey Map,” Service Design Tools [website] (last visited May 2010).

“The customer journey map is an oriented graph that describes the journey of a user by representing the different touchpoints that characterize his interaction with the service.” There are good examples of CJM diagrams tied into case studies on this site. Though lacking detailed how-to information, this is a good place to start learning about CJMs.

Bruce Tempkin. “It’s All About Your Customer’s Journey,” Customer Experience Matters [blog] (March 2010).

Brief overview of CJMs, but includes and interesting example from Lego as well as an overview to the steps necessary for creating a CJM.

* Bruce Tempkin. “Mapping the Customer Journey,” Forrester Report (Feb 2010).

Detailed 18-page report about CJMs from Forrester. The findings are based on interviews with 11 firms, including Razorfish, Mullberry Consulting, and Sapient. They define CJMs as “documents that visually illustrate customers’ processes, needs, and perceptions throughout their relationships with a company.” Forrester reports are not cheap, for sure, but if you can get your hands on this report it provides some of the best details and guidance on CJMs. This is probably one of the more detailed resources on CJMs with practical how-to information. It also includes a discussion of the Kano model for distinguishing user needs.

Touchpoint Dashboard Blog.

This is the blog for Touchpoint Dashboard, a software solution for customer journey mapping. I’ve not used the software and can’t vouch for it, but the blog has many good posts on CJMs, including a pretty good basic explanation (See: “What is a Customer Touchpoint or Journey Map“). As of Fall 2011, the blog has regular updates at a rate of 2-4 per month (dating back to July 2011).

Westminster IC. “Customer Journey Mapping,” YouTube Video [3:14] (Nov 2009).

Members of the Westminster Council talk about there experiences testing customer journeys. Very interesting short video that makes some good points.

Web Searches for “Customer Journey Map.”

One of the best ways to get an overview of approaches to customer journey mapping is looking at the final deliverables others have made available on the web. Try some of the searches below for examples:

• Google Image Search
• Bing Image Search
• Flicker

James Womack and Daniel Jones. “Lean Consumption,” Harvard Business Review (Feb 2005).

The authors call for: “streamlining the systems for providing goods and services, and making it easier for customers to buy and use them, a growing number of companies are actually lowering costs while saving everyone’s time.” This streamlining is what they called “lean consumption.” They write: “Mapping the steps in a production and consumption process is the best way to see opportunities for improvement. A map can reveal how broken processes waste providers’ and consumers’ time and money.” The recommend creating explicit diagrams showing activities on both the customer side and the supplier side. Exact timings in minutes are given in the examples in this diagram, so the proposed approach is not as broad as a full CJM, but it’s very similar.

References

[1] Shostack, L. G. (1982). “How to Design a Service.” European Journal of Marketing 16(1): 49-63.

[2] Shostack, L. G. (1984). “Design Services that Deliver.” Harvard Business Review(84115): 133-139