Designing CX Experiments
Design Log . Entry #3 . 31 March 2021
Welcome to Design Log Entry #3! Well, March sure didn’t go as planned. Even though I know that working on anything new, design-thinking-style, means twists and turns and many unexpected bumps along the way, it still surprises me every time.
Design thinking reminds us, when facing ambiguity and uncertainty, to respond by maintaining a bias towards action and by crafting clarity along the way. And for me, that’s what March was all about.
What I had expected to be a month of mini-marketing experiments turned into back-to-back weeks of mapping work to refine my DT Dojo design decisioning artifacts and to architect a light-weight CX Experiment Design process (I explain more about all this below). Moreover, I surprised myself by setting up a new DT Dojo blog earlier than originally planned.
So, in celebration of flexibility and agility, here is my third “Design Log Entry”. As with prior updates, I share design and development highlights, key observations and insights, and my favorite tools & techniques used this last month.
Design & development highlights from the last few weeks:
Figured out how to use Squarespace’s new email marketing tool (called “Campaigns”) and sent out my first email newsletter (Design Log Entry #2)!
Set up a new DT Dojo blog called “The DT Way” and dropped in a few posts to get it started. Have a look... I’d value any feedback you may have!
Ran 2 “CX Strategy Design Sprints” (each a week long) to help prioritize and focus upcoming marketing efforts and to map out next steps.
Crafted a full set of detailed CX design artifacts for DT Dojo (building on initial pre-launch sketches and incorporating recent learnings): stakeholder personas, journey maps, site & solution experience maps, etc.
Architected a light-weight CX Experiment Design process (see the above sketch and my notes below) and created a 2021 Road Map refining quarterly G2M goals and solution-design priorities for the next few months.
Key observations & insights from my CX Strategy Design work:
My initial plan for March didn’t involve detailing out a full set of revised CX design artifacts for DT Dojo. But, early in the month, I noticed that my list of new things to work on (backlog of edits & changes based on feedback, new course concepts, marketing and campaign ideas, etc.) was growing far faster than my ability to act on it. Exciting, but also overwhelming. It became clear that I needed a way to make faster, more-focused design and prioritization decisions. Revisiting my early (pre-launch) design notes and sketches and taking the time to revise and refine them with new learnings and ideas (all now in Mural, not on paper!) proved to be incredibly illuminating and informative. At first, I was unsure if it would be worth the extra time, but now I intend to make this a part of my quarterly re-planning process going forward.
Similar to one my observations in Update #1 (about how there’s a big gap between what Design Thinking calls a “prototype” and what Lean Startup calls a “minimum viable product”), I’ve noticed again that there are a lot of dots that need to be connected between what Design Thinking calls a “test” and what Lean Startup calls an “experiment”. So, I’m drawing on the strengths of each methodology to develop my own approach tuned for rapid, early-stage CX design and digital experimentation. I look forward to giving it a try this next month and sharing how it goes.
Favorite design tools & techniques that I used these last few weeks:
Mural.co - for creating visual maps and design artifacts, digitally. FYI, the Mural team just released new diagramming and mapping capabilities that dramatically simplify and speed up the visual mapping process!
Noteshelf - for sketching and for visual thinking. Though I’ve mentioned Noteshelf before (my go-to iPad sketching app that I use as a digital design log), I want to highlight it here again, as it really helped me think through new things quickly and visually this month (before creating more detailed maps in Mural).
Voice Memos - for audio design notes & reflections. Yes, the humble iPhone recording app is one of my favorite design tools. For years, I’ve been hacking my creative process to make the most of driving time (e.g., school drop-offs, taking kids to lessons & activities, and errands) by recording think-aloud audio notes that I use like an audible-only design log. For me, I find that talking through something out-loud (even by myself in the car!) is akin to visual thinking (à la sketching), and works particularly well for design ideation, reflection & replanning.