Ecosystem Maps

So, I'd like to introduce you to the next mapping tool here. It's the *ecosystem mapping*. It's a template that you can use. It's also a group activity. To start with, let's look at this quote here from the newly appointed CEO of Nokia in 2011. And he said this: What he pointed to there is this problem

that every business faces when they're delivering a service, which is the relationship and dependencies of the entire ecosystem. Now, at this stage, Microsoft acquired Nokia, and so they inherited this particular problem. But I think it illustrates the point that we're looking for here – which is:

What's going on in your *entire* ecosystem? And how are you going to deal with that in terms of creating a service that really resonates with customers? So, I like to define the ecosystem as those who are *bringing* the experience to the customer. Some people define ecosystem with "the customers" or "the users" and I don't think that's helpful; so,

I would like to define ecosystem as *those who are manufacturing the experience*. So, think of it as the employers, employees, supply chain, suppliers, contractors – everyone that goes into making that, building *that stage* – you know – making that thing perform. It's the *things they're doing* and the *value they're bringing*. It's the *information* that they need or

use or require or share; the *people* or systems that *they* interact with, the *services* that are available to them, the *devices* that they might use and the channels they might communicate with. So, in Amazon's case, they have their own delivery kind of ecosystem. That's my truck.

The Amazon ecosystem delivery is actually UPS and FedEx as well as USPS, the US postal service. But they've also added *private drivers*. So, they have private drivers It looks like somebody's dad, somebody's father driving the truck. So, you have *that* going on. And then you have the *kiosk* that takes / that inputs the packages. Behind there, there's the *database*. So, there's a system there.

From that database, there's an email notification. The email notification goes up, pings the customer and sends that email to the customer. The customer gets it on their device and so forth. We also have the infrastructure over here, so the drivers got their own special Amazon app. There's some kind of logistics happening here behind the scenes. So, you get the general idea. It's mapping everything that's happening in the ecosystem:

all the actors all the roles, all the stuff that's going on and looking for where the dependencies are and where the breakpoints are that occur within that ecosystem – very very important. And if you *don't* do ecosystem mapping, then it's my belief that you're not really leveraging the whole set of tools that service design affords. Ecosystem mapping is as *important as personas*. With the ecosystem map, you want to start with your *current state*.

It's not a map of the future, desired state. It's where you're at *now*. It's about understanding all the connections that occur in all those dependencies. It's about understanding how stakeholders, databases, devices, products, services – how everything kind of maps together and how that information flows and the exchange of value that occurs between – you know – all these different actors that are going on here

and – yeah – it's a *group activity*; just like a lot of service design things, you're showing here with your team. Now, here's an example from the Fiat Group in Italy – the Fiat Design Group – and they mapped out the future of transportation. So, they actually looked at the future side of things. And you can do that, but first do the *current* picture view.

It's important to – you know – *don't dream out what could be*; *understand what you have to deal with*. Now, Fiat's group actually added the what, why, how, who, when and where of the situation and then looked at the ecosystem across these different lenses that you can see here in this example. The activity here is to take your group and start *drawing* this out.

Each person will draw their *own* version of this. So, if you have a big white board – if you have a big one of these – you'll put them all together. Then each person presents to the group because you're going to see similarities and differences – and you can note those, write those down. Post those to a wall and draw the connections between all the individual maps, so you have so many different ones. And then use this alongside your journey maps and use it to guide your service blueprint. The ecosystem map is you building up to your service blueprint.

And instead of jumping into the surface blueprint, this is about doing your due diligence to *dig deeper* and find out what exactly is happening in that vital ecosystem.

When you design a user interface, skills like visual design, user testing and prototyping are critical. But when you design a complex experience like a buying process, an onboarding sequence, really anything that includes multiple steps over time. Journey mapping is an essential tool. This course will teach you how to use journey mapping in your own work to design holistically and also to identify gaps and opportunities in complex products. It will also help you streamline your team's design efforts.

You'll begin by learning about the power of journey, mapping and design and the different variations that you can use. We'll also cover how to gather data in your journey mapping process and how to make sense of it using a perspective grid. There'll be practical tips on how to create different types of journey maps and how to set up and run a journey mapping workshop by the end of this course. You'll have the knowledge, methods and hands on practice. You'll need to use journey mapping in your own work. The course also includes several downloadable templates

that'll give you a jumpstart in your own journey mapping projects at the end of each lesson. There are multiple choice and open ended questions that are graded personal by industry experts. You'll also have the option to create a practical design project. This will give you invaluable hands on experience that you can add to your portfolio at the end of the course. You'll gain an industry recognized course certificate which is trusted by leading companies around the world, and that will make a great addition to your LinkedIn profile or your design portfolio.

So are you ready?

So, I'd like to introduce you to the next mapping tool here. It's the *ecosystem mapping*. It's a template that you can use. It's also a group activity. To start with, let's look at this quote here from the newly appointed CEO of Nokia in 2011. And he said this: What he pointed to there is this problem

that every business faces when they're delivering a service, which is the relationship and dependencies of the entire ecosystem. Now, at this stage, Microsoft acquired Nokia, and so they inherited this particular problem. But I think it illustrates the point that we're looking for here – which is:

What's going on in your *entire* ecosystem? And how are you going to deal with that in terms of creating a service that really resonates with customers? So, I like to define the ecosystem as those who are *bringing* the experience to the customer. Some people define ecosystem with "the customers" or "the users" and I don't think that's helpful; so,

I would like to define ecosystem as *those who are manufacturing the experience*. So, think of it as the employers, employees, supply chain, suppliers, contractors – everyone that goes into making that, building *that stage* – you know – making that thing perform. It's the *things they're doing* and the *value they're bringing*. It's the *information* that they need or

use or require or share; the *people* or systems that *they* interact with, the *services* that are available to them, the *devices* that they might use and the channels they might communicate with. So, in Amazon's case, they have their own delivery kind of ecosystem. That's my truck.

The Amazon ecosystem delivery is actually UPS and FedEx as well as USPS, the US postal service. But they've also added *private drivers*. So, they have private drivers It looks like somebody's dad, somebody's father driving the truck. So, you have *that* going on. And then you have the *kiosk* that takes / that inputs the packages. Behind there, there's the *database*. So, there's a system there.

From that database, there's an email notification. The email notification goes up, pings the customer and sends that email to the customer. The customer gets it on their device and so forth. We also have the infrastructure over here, so the drivers got their own special Amazon app. There's some kind of logistics happening here behind the scenes. So, you get the general idea. It's mapping everything that's happening in the ecosystem:

all the actors all the roles, all the stuff that's going on and looking for where the dependencies are and where the breakpoints are that occur within that ecosystem – very very important. And if you *don't* do ecosystem mapping, then it's my belief that you're not really leveraging the whole set of tools that service design affords. Ecosystem mapping is as *important as personas*. With the ecosystem map, you want to start with your *current state*.

It's not a map of the future, desired state. It's where you're at *now*. It's about understanding all the connections that occur in all those dependencies. It's about understanding how stakeholders, databases, devices, products, services – how everything kind of maps together and how that information flows and the exchange of value that occurs between – you know – all these different actors that are going on here

and – yeah – it's a *group activity*; just like a lot of service design things, you're showing here with your team. Now, here's an example from the Fiat Group in Italy – the Fiat Design Group – and they mapped out the future of transportation. So, they actually looked at the future side of things. And you can do that, but first do the *current* picture view.

It's important to – you know – *don't dream out what could be*; *understand what you have to deal with*. Now, Fiat's group actually added the what, why, how, who, when and where of the situation and then looked at the ecosystem across these different lenses that you can see here in this example. The activity here is to take your group and start *drawing* this out.

Each person will draw their *own* version of this. So, if you have a big white board – if you have a big one of these – you'll put them all together. Then each person presents to the group because you're going to see similarities and differences – and you can note those, write those down. Post those to a wall and draw the connections between all the individual maps, so you have so many different ones. And then use this alongside your journey maps and use it to guide your service blueprint. The ecosystem map is you building up to your service blueprint.

And instead of jumping into the surface blueprint, this is about doing your due diligence to *dig deeper* and find out what exactly is happening in that vital ecosystem.

So, I'd like to introduce you to the next mapping tool here. It's the *ecosystem mapping*. It's a template that you can use. It's also a group activity. To start with, let's look at this quote here from the newly appointed CEO of Nokia in 2011. And he said this: What he pointed to there is this problem

that every business faces when they're delivering a service, which is the relationship and dependencies of the entire ecosystem. Now, at this stage, Microsoft acquired Nokia, and so they inherited this particular problem. But I think it illustrates the point that we're looking for here – which is:

What's going on in your *entire* ecosystem? And how are you going to deal with that in terms of creating a service that really resonates with customers? So, I like to define the ecosystem as those who are *bringing* the experience to the customer. Some people define ecosystem with "the customers" or "the users" and I don't think that's helpful; so,

I would like to define ecosystem as *those who are manufacturing the experience*. So, think of it as the employers, employees, supply chain, suppliers, contractors – everyone that goes into making that, building *that stage* – you know – making that thing perform. It's the *things they're doing* and the *value they're bringing*. It's the *information* that they need or

use or require or share; the *people* or systems that *they* interact with, the *services* that are available to them, the *devices* that they might use and the channels they might communicate with. So, in Amazon's case, they have their own delivery kind of ecosystem. That's my truck.

The Amazon ecosystem delivery is actually UPS and FedEx as well as USPS, the US postal service. But they've also added *private drivers*. So, they have private drivers It looks like somebody's dad, somebody's father driving the truck. So, you have *that* going on. And then you have the *kiosk* that takes / that inputs the packages. Behind there, there's the *database*. So, there's a system there.

From that database, there's an email notification. The email notification goes up, pings the customer and sends that email to the customer. The customer gets it on their device and so forth. We also have the infrastructure over here, so the drivers got their own special Amazon app. There's some kind of logistics happening here behind the scenes. So, you get the general idea. It's mapping everything that's happening in the ecosystem:

all the actors all the roles, all the stuff that's going on and looking for where the dependencies are and where the breakpoints are that occur within that ecosystem – very very important. And if you *don't* do ecosystem mapping, then it's my belief that you're not really leveraging the whole set of tools that service design affords. Ecosystem mapping is as *important as personas*. With the ecosystem map, you want to start with your *current state*.

It's not a map of the future, desired state. It's where you're at *now*. It's about understanding all the connections that occur in all those dependencies. It's about understanding how stakeholders, databases, devices, products, services – how everything kind of maps together and how that information flows and the exchange of value that occurs between – you know – all these different actors that are going on here

and – yeah – it's a *group activity*; just like a lot of service design things, you're showing here with your team. Now, here's an example from the Fiat Group in Italy – the Fiat Design Group – and they mapped out the future of transportation. So, they actually looked at the future side of things. And you can do that, but first do the *current* picture view.

It's important to – you know – *don't dream out what could be*; *understand what you have to deal with*. Now, Fiat's group actually added the what, why, how, who, when and where of the situation and then looked at the ecosystem across these different lenses that you can see here in this example. The activity here is to take your group and start *drawing* this out.

Each person will draw their *own* version of this. So, if you have a big white board – if you have a big one of these – you'll put them all together. Then each person presents to the group because you're going to see similarities and differences – and you can note those, write those down. Post those to a wall and draw the connections between all the individual maps, so you have so many different ones. And then use this alongside your journey maps and use it to guide your service blueprint. The ecosystem map is you building up to your service blueprint.

And instead of jumping into the surface blueprint, this is about doing your due diligence to *dig deeper* and find out what exactly is happening in that vital ecosystem.

Let's take a brief look at where service design came from. I think it's important to understand a little bit about its origins and so you can wrap your arms around – you know – what it is as a skill that you can build out and develop on your own. This quick definition here from Louise Downe, who's the head of design for the UK Government Cabinet Office and Digital Services.

And she reinforced here that it's – you're basically figuring out what all the pieces are of an activity and then bringing those together around a user's need and kind of building them from the ground up. And that may mean new systems. It may mean a new app; it may mean a new brochure or a new loyalty program or whatever that new system to support the experience is going to be. Now, service design actually was first mentioned in the early '80s

by Lynn Shostack. And her whole contribution was that we need to look at that kind of "behind the stage". You know, we can see what customer service looks like and how services are delivered and products are delivered. But we need to spend more time and take more care with how the organization and how all the different employees are lined up in order to make a service happen.

Sarah Gibbons also adds that the responsibility of everybody in the organization is really necessary. It's not just something that can be left to management like it used to be. Now, I think of service design as something that is the culmination

and the bringing together of UX design, human-centered or user-centered design and design thinking, which is essentially an application of human-centered design. And then, as we've been talking about, this omni-channel or cross-channel environment; and this kind of merging of product and service together and ways to contact, for example, is very omni-channel. You might use a a chatbot. You might use a form on a website.

You might pick up the phone, or you may use a softphone like a Skype phone or web audio in order to reach out. So, I think we've come from this kind of desktop where we're sitting at computers – at least with the digital delivery and – you know – filling in forms and doing things online – to kind of getting up and moving around and being able to pull up those forms and being able to chat online right from our mobile phones. So, here our mobile phones take us out into these different physical environments,

these different service environments, and they bring that social context in to the design problem. So, on top of that, of course, we add business processes, procedures, operations logistics, workflows. And that's what really makes up service design and differentiates it from UX design. And the goals of service design are to transform this service delivery experience. So, it's not just the user's experience.

That's important – that user customer experience. But it's also the organization and all the actors that are involved in delivering that experience. It's taking something that's *digital*, *physical* and *social* for sure – right – because a customer's interaction with a customer service rep is a social experience; walking into a physical space is a social experience – and mixing that with human-centered design and design thinking approaches to service delivery.

And that's really where we're at with defining service design. Why service design? It's really about reducing complexity of these kind of complex systems and thinking about this *over time* – you know – the relationship with the customer; their pain as they're problem-solving throughout the lifetime of their – you know – maybe their actual life, but their lifetime as a customer; and *holistically* taking it from a big, big, wider systems perspective.

For service designers, service design's goal is really to align and take advantage of the *resources* you have in your organization; the *user's needs* – the understanding of user needs and empathy; and the *outcomes* that your organization is trying to get. It might be a conversion rate. It might be a signup. It might be getting someone to complete something on time – for example, a tax return or IPO filing and bringing that alignment to the customer, to the service provider

and the stakeholders that you're working with as a service designer in your organization. So, for me, what it takes to get service design right is you've got to keep your eye on the backstage as well as the frontstage and the systems and processes that connect it – so, almost like that *middle-stage* in between, that invisible line that crosses over.

And you want to also avoid missing details on the frontstage, at the interface side. So, that's where a grounding in user experience or experience design can be very helpful. It's important to *have your teams engaged*. There's a real emphasis in service design on *stakeholder engagement* and having what I call working towards a *total experience delivery* – a TED, if you will. So, a couple of acronyms there:

Total Experience Delivery – you know – that you're thinking about *all the moving parts and pieces* and you're *actually delivering them*. You're not just drawing it out or recommending it and then – like you might do with UX. Teams converting from UX to service design is definitely a challenge. But I think doing it right means that you're not just clear about UX but you've got the service design competency built on there.

And that means *specialist knowledge*. We've talked about systems thinking, the whole picture or the holistic thinking and then FTP – or "Framing the Total Problem" as I call it – FTP and TED. So, Total Experience Delivery; Framing the Total Problem. Those are two things that are really important in terms of getting service design done right.

When you design a user interface, skills like visual design, user testing and prototyping are critical. But when you design a complex experience like a buying process, an onboarding sequence, really anything that includes multiple steps over time. Journey mapping is an essential tool. This course will teach you how to use journey mapping in your own work to design holistically and also to identify gaps and opportunities in complex products. It will also help you streamline your team's design efforts.

You'll begin by learning about the power of journey, mapping and design and the different variations that you can use. We'll also cover how to gather data in your journey mapping process and how to make sense of it using a perspective grid. There'll be practical tips on how to create different types of journey maps and how to set up and run a journey mapping workshop by the end of this course. You'll have the knowledge, methods and hands on practice. You'll need to use journey mapping in your own work. The course also includes several downloadable templates

that'll give you a jumpstart in your own journey mapping projects at the end of each lesson. There are multiple choice and open ended questions that are graded personal by industry experts. You'll also have the option to create a practical design project. This will give you invaluable hands on experience that you can add to your portfolio at the end of the course. You'll gain an industry recognized course certificate which is trusted by leading companies around the world, and that will make a great addition to your LinkedIn profile or your design portfolio.

So are you ready?

We're going to dive into two very essential tools which are your key starting point for service design. And those two tools are the business canvas and the value proposition canvas. Let's get started by learning how to use the business model canvas. Now, one of the things that differentiates service design from UX

is this grounding and this essential need to take a very close look at business models and the value proposition that you're delivering. Ultimately, you really have to understand the moving parts and pieces to what amounts to not just an interface that gets launched but an entire service – an entire ecosystem that's created and activated with different channels and different touch points all working together to deliver core value to

the customer. So, the business model canvas is a tool that was developed by Osterwalder and Pigneur. And they basically created this as a way to generate conversation and dialogue as well as help you map out the business model. So, if you look at the canvas there, in the top-left corner, you've got key partners.

So, key partners are the entities that are going to help you fulfill the key activities and the key resources. Key activities are the things you really need to do in order to fulfill on this value proposition. So, it's the things that go into the day-to-day business – the essential things that have to get done. The key resources are the tools that you use to get those things done. And so, the partners are going to help those.

So, you'll start to see a cause-effect type relationship hopefully with these different aspects of the canvas. Value proposition is the thing that we think is going to create value for the customer. So, it might be a new idea; it might be a decrease in costs; it might be some value-add that the customer gets. Then we have customer relationships. Those are going to be things like customer retention and acquisition and upselling. So, "How do you *get* the customer?",

"How do you *keep* the customer?" and then "How do you *continue to add value* to the customer?". And I think that this customer relationship and the value proposition are intimately related because everything you're doing really is about retaining that customer relationship and thinking about the lifetime of the customer. So, our journey maps – as our kind of next step from this – are really going to map this out. Over here on the right, we have *customer segments*.

And in UX we think of those as *personas*. These are the targets. So, are we targeting young people? Millennials? Are we targeting seniors? Are we targeting men, women, children? – you know – who are we targeting? And then, we have the channels here. The channels are going to be how we deliver that value proposition. So, is it going to be online? Is it going to be through physical means? A combination of the two? An example of this is I just bought a gift card for my mother

to her favorite restaurant. And her favorite restaurant didn't have gift cards on the website. So, I found the site; I Googled "gift card for" this restaurant and this service came up called Giftly. So, they said yeah you can send a gift card. So, I chose the amount, I sent the gift card and sent it off, put a customized message, got to choose the style of— So, this is all the *channel* – so, Giftly completely helping you choose gift cards for someone, delivering them by email. So, that's the online channel, so they get it through an email

– for example, in this case. So, down here we have *cost structure* and the *revenue streams*. So, now we're already thinking about ROI and where the money is going to be made. So – you know – is this advertising? Is this – you know – like Facebook monetizes your data basically. They monetize your activity – getting a lot of heat for that now because the ethical nature of that and the privacy and the spying and all the sort of stuff that goes with

– with Facebook's – you know – a very difficult space that they're in right now. It makes you think that there should be an additional one here called *Sustainability*. Right – so, "How sustainable is it to the planet?" from a planetary-resource-responsibility point of view and sustainable in terms of the – you know – "Are you just making a bunch of fast money, or...?" in that example. And then, what kind of money you're going to make from it.

So, partnerships, key activities, key resources, the value proposition, relationships, channels, customer segments, cost structure, revenue streams. And – this is my own thinking is – *adding sustainability* because I think it actually is really, really relevant. If you have an MBA, a lot of this is going to be traditionally in your mind for an MBA. This is why Don Norman – the Grandfather of User-centered Design – many years ago said that

if you want to have impact in your organization, you should just get an MBA degree. I remember reading that and going "Wow!". And basically what he was talking about is understand the business model, understand the business objectives *up front*. Map that out. Now, if you're doing an MBA, the latest MBA programs have this last part here: the sustainability. If you're doing a very current degree, or a lot of MBA programs will have that.