Visualization tools serve a key purpose of communicating user data in the Design Thinking and Service Design field. We have talked to Customer Experience Managers and Service Designers and based on our own experience in the field, visualizations are made for different stages of design processes. This is mainly an organization’s blueprint of the present situation, a draft of a future, desired state and the roadmap to achieve it.
Business professionals are only recently getting used to sketching and creating with their hands, activity often related to other design fields. The concept of drawing, creating mind maps and building prototypes with research insights is new to the business world, a paradigm that has been shifting through the implementation of design thinking methodologies.
Visualization Tools – All in One
There’s a long list of existing visualization methodologies which include Customer Journeys, Personas, Empathy Maps, Photo Safaris, Story Boards, between others, all of them working in favour of transforming the intangibility of services into something visible and verifiable. This intangibility may be the reason why many fundamental aspects of service design remain unexplored academically compared to other design fields.
It is valuable to mention that visualization processes are not intended to substitute the collection of data and team collaboration during workshops. Visualization techniques serve the purpose of interpretation, articulation of insights and understanding. It is used as a way of grounding design proposals. A wall full of post-its has an enormous amount of collected data and this might be useful to the design team, however, a more aesthetic visualization might be a better communication tool with stakeholders outside the design team. Modelled visualization proves to be more effective in understanding both the problem space and the solution space, identifying design opportunities, highlighting stakeholders and their relationship with the processes that deliver a specific service.
That is the reason why at Milkymap, we are working hard in order to make it possible to synthesize your data into a customer journey, fast, easily and effectively. You can build maps by adding episodes, multimedia, emotions and touchpoints. With a proven methodology that uses scientific elements, the tool is simple to use, so not only the experts can visualize Customer Experience, but also the less experienced mappers. Milkymap is straight forward, to-the-point, intuitive and has lots of design. Milkymap works for every sector and is intended for everyone; patients, students, citizens, customers and employees.
The tool is now being tested by a group Customer Experience professionals and will be released to the public in the next few weeks. Join us on social media in order to follow our steps and be up to date with the latest developments.
MilkyMap is an initiative of MilkyWay D-Sign Factory in The Netherlands, an agency that builds innovative tools for Customer Experience and founded by Danny Peters and Olf Uineken. With MilkyMap you can visualize customer journeys fast, easily and effectively. It helps you champion Customer Journey Mapping and create a business that is loved by every customer.
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