adventure: the emdash process 02
Knowing the journey your customers have taken lets you create new, meaningful experiences for them.
Ellaluna Taylor
September 14, 2021
Well hello! If you're here for part 02 after reading part 01, welcome back - glad you could make it. If this is your first time, come on in! I'm certain you’ll find something useful & interesting.
This is the second in a series of 4 articles that outlines our process Action, Adventure, Danger & Romance that we like to follow when partnering with a business to launch their digital product or really make their customer experience shine, but in reality it’s a framework that anyone, be it founder or product owner, can apply to structure their approach when making their big idea a reality.
That brings us to the fun part, Adventure.
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1. talk to customers
2. document their journey
3. overlay solutions
The obvious starting point is simply talking to your customers.
There are strengths in all methods of research, both quantitative and qualitative, but at emdash we believe at this stage nothing beats talking one-on-one with your customers. It produces a richer back story and a deeper understanding of their current journey.
If you can couple this with stakeholder & domain expert interviews, you gain gain a wider picture of all the characters involved.
So not just the steps in your hero’s journey but all the action behind-the-scenes that needed to happen to let them continue.
As we fill out their backstory, it’s critical to document the journey they’ve been on, noting all the steps they’ve taken to complete a goal, and how many goals occur within a specific timeframe, or chapter in their story.
Once we understand the journey they have been on so far, we can start to plan the adventure we intend to take them on.
Knowing the steps they have taken means we can design solutions that make these steps easier, quicker, more enjoyable, and really elevate their experience.
We can pinpoint moments of inefficiency and optimise them, or create a brand-new adventure entirely knowing what to avoid or build upon.
Knowing the journey your customers have taken lets you create new, meaningful experiences for them.
If you think of your customers as the heroes, then as you know every good hero needs an origin story. This is where we understand their motivation, what reason do they have to be on this journey, what triggers do they have, and what can we leverage when creating a product or service we want them to use. What do they want, what can we provide them with to help them continue on their adventure. And how does this align with your idea, what are the intersection points between the journey they’re already on and the adventure you’re creating for them.
It’s not enough to know who your customers are. You need to know them inside and out.
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
- Steve Jobs
