Okay, getting started, when would you want to use journey mapping? Well, anytime you're starting a project, whether that is something that's brand new, it doesn't exist, or you're adding to something that that exists, you're you're improving it somehow. In any case, you have a goal in mind, there's a intention about what, why you're going about this thing. And here you are, you're in a situation where you need to plan, but you don't want to just jump in immediately. You want to gather enough perspective to be confident about what you're doing. Mapping helps you investigate a goal and see this goal in a wider context.

Mapping a journey is different than gathering requirements. So this could be a requirement to host a board game gathering, then I would say it's a matter of just breaking this big problem down into smaller problems. To Do List. Right? Is it has it done? What needs to do what what needs to be done to do?

Is there a note about it cost time? Well, you can face the problem like that, and break this thing down into smaller things. And in a way, mapping a journey does help accomplish that same thing. I would say it prepares you to be more ready to thoughtfully break down what you're trying to work on, because you know more about why and you know more about who and the needs and the shared intentions and concerns of everyone involved. So instead of going straight from a goal, and then jumping to planning, mapping says, Let's take a moment and think about this from a few different perspectives and gain a wider context through that wider context. We should be able to make better decisions Here we are with this Venn diagram of three different perspectives that help create a wider, well informed context for making anything.

And journey mapping helps you prepare in this way, this isn't the journey map, but this, this, these are sort of perspectives that you'll put into your journey map, where of course you have your audience, the people that you're serving your users, your customers, that is critical to involve them. And then involving the people who are funding or the organization, the, the umbrella that you're working under. That's, that's the business. Finance, we have the the makers, the engineers, artists, whoever is is creating the thing and putting it into the world. This is this is that so the audience, they don't necessarily show up and then how Have a meeting because what happens here is the audience is represented by design. So that's your role is to be their voice, your role is to be their voice and to combine the other voices and to be a place where you can try to arrive in the middle where you have this informed, strengthened idea.

Does it make sense for our organization? Can we support and fund and profit from this do we do we achieve our goals for why our organization exists through this project? And then is this project serving its audience in doing good for them and not harming them and involving them. So they are represented and included and it is usable, useful and maybe even desirable, where I learned this, from ideal has published this, this model called they just they call it Human Centered Design. HCD very handy, awesome resource, and they call this desirability viability and feasibility, so feasibility related to the creation of it, can we make it? Will it work?

Are there any risks or concerns? Are we ready to do this and that kind of thing? It's it's this practical maker perspective. The business, again, is the financial perspective and the fitting with the business model and purpose perspective. And then the design or the desirability is saying that if we include our audience, and we think of them, as we make this and are holding ourselves accountable to be like, Are we really clear? Are we we are understanding them and representing them and including them?

Or are we imposing something on this audience and that means we may have something that isn't well met. Let's Let's avoid that. Let's make something that is a positive experience for for them. That's really important. And so as as a designer, researcher, facilitator, or someone, just wearing that hat. That's the job of the designers to make sure this audience is very well represented.

And then including the perspectives of everyone else involved. This Venn diagram, I find very helpful to, to think well, are we are we, including enough perspectives to feel confident in what we're proceeding with as, as our shared intention? Who gets to design this journey? I would say that you do. And because anyone with can use the thinking tools of user experience. The tools of user experience come from lots of other disciplines.

Everyone's welcome. So you get to design the journey by choosing to be a sort of catalyst for collaboration, you're listening and combining perspectives. That's the work of assembling the journey, understanding the audience and then representing it as far as what happens For them from their perspective, that's, that's the journey. And if you're doing that, then whoever gets the who gets to design it is who is participating. So jargon and style user experience design UX, often as it's referred to, is a multi disciplined thing that is an applied research and design practice that's been formed and grown through industry need. borrowing from all sorts of different in this industry and academic practices.

It stands on the shoulders of psychology, industrial design, anthropology, among others, all fields of study, build languages as they solve problems, and that represents their expertise and their informed perspective and it can be handy to dig deeper into problems. So it may not seem friendly or apparent as far as what these words mean. to new people who are coming into the space, so jargon can can include. And you can feel knowledgeable that you're using terms like user experience and a journey and mapping and other things that will come up. But then it can have the effect of excluding I will do my best in this class to use as little jargon as I can. And be thoughtful about it.

When it does come up. please do comment, post and ask questions if something becomes unclear or isn't approachable due to its unfamiliar language. So getting started with journey mapping, we covered that we're setting an intention is that this is more than acting on a plan based on an intention. It's more than requirements. It's digging deeper and it's user focused, and it's including a wider context with business engineering and your users and design. And finding a way to unite those voices.

And as far as who gets to do that, who's willing to do that listening and collaborating and making a safe space to move ahead with a clear enough idea of a journey map. Next we're going to go into the tools that you can use to make a journey map and then we'll have a focus on the natural media stuff like using pen and something to draw on.