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Using Experience Maps to uncover user behaviour Pt II

Dec 15, 2021

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TLDR: Reveal a tapestry of needs and motivations that shape financial decisions. Using Experience Mapping to uncover insights into the customer lifecycle and expose common threads.

Hard Skills:

Design Process

Research & Theory

Visual Design

Soft Skills:

Strategic Thinking

Problem-Solving

Critical Thinking

Full List →

This article builds upon the previous post ‘Get to know your users better‘. For a more comprehensive understanding of the UX and Service Design process that led to this point, I encourage readers to refer back.

Visualise the Journey

From Common Themes to Experience Mapping

You should now really begin to unravel the who, what and why that define your target audience. Now there is an opportunity to unearth the common themes that weave through their experiences, transforming them into actionable insights through experience mapping.

Generic heat map, or Experience Maps showing user needs, problems and goals. Transform these themes into actionable insights that will guide the design process to resonate with the needs of your users.

Applying mapping techniques to personas types

Shifting the traditional application of an experience map and focussing on the customer lifecycle particular to this financial services customer, more insight and understanding was surfaced by categorising the needs, problems, and goals distinct to an informed personas-type actioning a focussed single, representative task. These were segmented into emotions and motivations.

In the details with Investor Type #1

Plot what emotions a particular segmented persona was experiencing across a single representative task — Plot what emotions a particular segmented persona was experiencing across a **single representative task**

Investor type #1 persona – “I want to quickly get to the details of a fund” categorised how they were orientated through the digital experience and uncovered how to attract, engage, orient, and retain this specific persona.

The mindset of Investor Type #2

By analysing how well the current design met these needs, we uncovered opportunities to attract, engage, and retain this valuable persona. — Analysing the current design and uncover opportunities to **attract, engage, and retain** this valuable persona.

Investor type #2 persona – Easily justify that a fund is performing also followed the control. Beginning with Orientation, linked to defined buckets and evaluating needs around investment philosophy, financial storytelling and model portfolios, for example. Identify what Attract mechanism drew them in and if ease-of-access to data influenced their decision-making process.

Empowering Investor Type #3 with Confidence

The ‘Retain’ narrative: Develop a more comprehensive understanding of investor needs and motivations, paving the way for a more tailored and effective digital experience.

Investor type #3 persona – Guide me and make me feel in control when investing builds on the Retain narrative, examining how the digital experience addresses their need for support and guidance. From an Invest and Help perspective, how Risk is demonstrated and how to cultivate Trust empowering them to navigate the investment landscape with confidence.

Type #4; The insider scoop

Identifying opportunities to enhance the “Help” and “Invest” narratives, providing clear guidance, personalised recommendations, and transparent risk information.

Investor type #4 persona had the need to “Provide easily accessible information to reassure my position” as a corporate user. Touch points pushed to ’encouraged a long term time investment,’ and ‘establishing the real truth was behind the marketing efforts’. The needs and wants of this user all stemmed from cutting through the noise and showing insider industry knowledge for trends and success.

The combined heat map

Combined heat map: Highlighting the priority needs and common themes included storytelling, transparency and easy-to-understand content

Unifying insights to prioritise needs

The combined heat map elevated the investor experience and fostered stronger relationships with clients and customers, empowering them to achieve their financial goals.

Priority touch points

This highlighted insight from the proto-persona grouped to Thinking and Doing actions during the activity; How our audience behaved within each section of the customer lifecycle.

User needs by lifecycle

By further analysing the results reveal traffic light priorities. Here I have only shown one persona group.

Next steps

Dynamic Mapping

Map identified priority touch-points

Partner the priority touch-points identified in this article (and the previous ‘Get to know your users better‘) to the actual site content.

30K Pages

Resource & Allocation.

With over 30K site pages, HR Resource and Budgeting need to use the above data in their Business Case to justify allocation.

Alignment

Stakeholder management

Harnessing the collective energy of stakeholders to transform content into a powerful tool that drives results.

By aligning content with user needs and ensuring stakeholder buy-in, this organisation can create a more impactful content strategy that drives business growth and enhances user experience.