Sharing the journey maps so far

I've been continuing to focus on some detailed journey maps this week. They've reached a good point in their maturity, so I've begun to share them with the team and I think they're going down well so far.

I've gone into a lot of detail and it's helped me to show how much time and effort is being spent on various case working tasks across the internal side of the service.

It's now easier to spot one-off tasks that are taking way too much time. It's also shedding light on smaller tasks that are repeated many times across a case, so even though these tasks are quick in isolation, they are costly when you add them all together across the service.

We are also learning more about when and how tasks are shared between different teams.

Now that I have this deeper knowledge of the user journey, I'm feeling more useful in refinement sessions. I feel confident that I've got something useful to add to team conversations, and that I can be a stronger advocate for users and the wider context they are working in.

What's next for the team?

The team are approaching a big milestone, so I think we're starting to wonder what's next. There's an expectation that some of us will be moved onto other products by the end of March. It sounds a long way away, but it's only about 4 sprints.

It's a little disconcerting on a personal level, but it also means I'm wondering how best to focus my time. If we know the future size and shape of the team ahead of time, then we'll be able to plan and organise our work more effectively. But I can also see why it's difficult for stakeholders to make that call, at least until our team have delivered everything we've been working on.

How to build trust as a designer

I really liked this timely post by Joe Natoli on LinkedIn this week. He writes about how being a great UX (user experience) designer won't help, if you can't build trust with stakeholders and speak their language.

You have to calmly explain tradeoffs instead of arguing and defending your “position.” Your research findings have to speak to business risk and opportunity first — user needs second.
— Joe Natoli on LinkedIn

It's something I need to work on.

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