Results by Design: UX Insights for Business Leaders

Description: In this episode, hosts Craig Nishizaki and Michael Woo dive deep into the journey mapping process and explore how businesses can identify opportunities for innovation, drive impactful solutions, and align user needs with business goals. Learn how to move beyond the basics of journey mapping to frame opportunities effectively, generate creative solutions, and validate them for maximum impact.

What You’ll Learn:

• Leveraging “How-Might-We” Statements for Problem Framing
• Common Mistakes in Identifying Opportunities
• Techniques for Generating and Prioritizing Solutions
• Validating Ideas Through Usability Testing
• Communicating UX Impact to Key Stakeholders

Interview Participants:

• Craig Nishizaki, Head of Business @ UpTop
• Michael Woo, Head of Design @ UpTop

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Results by Design UX Insights for business leaders, the podcast that dives deep into the world of UX design, strategy and insights. Tune in, take action, and design your way to success.

Michael Woo:
Hi, I’m Craig. And I’m Michael. And we are your hosts for the Results by Design podcast.

Craig Nishizaki:
Michael, how are you doing today?

Michael Woo:
Good. It’s the last episode before the year ends and when this podcast drops, it’ll be 2025, and I want to wish our listeners a happy new year if, and you know what? It’s been a wild year for us, Craig, but we made it and I want to let you know that I really appreciate you, man. So how are you doing?

Craig Nishizaki:
I’m doing great, thanks. I appreciate that. I appreciate you as well. I mean, it’s been a great year so far and we’re looking forward to next year 2025. I’m also excited about today’s topic that we’re going to talk about. We’re going to expand on customer journey mapping and the idea that you’ve done the work to create a journey map, mapping out your customer’s experiences and identifying their pain points and the moments of delight. But now comes the big question. What’s next? So we’re going to explore the key steps to identifying, framing and prioritizing opportunities from your journey map. Mike, what do you think about that topic?

Michael Woo:
Well, everywhere you turn, you hear how valuable it is to create journey maps for your digital experiences, but it’s only half of the equation. So what you do with your journey map is equally as important and your journey map should be used as a catalyst for change and hopefully our conversation will provide a framework for our listeners on how to do that.

Craig Nishizaki:
Alright, sounds great. Let’s dive right in. Creating a journey map is a huge milestone, but it’s really just the starting point now you have to frame the opportunity. Michael, can you help our listeners understand what it means to move from creating a journey map to framing the opportunities that reveals?

Michael Woo:
So looking back at your journey map, you should have some key items mapped out starting from the top left of your map. I’m going to briefly recap what those are. It should have one each step that customers take to achieve a particular goal. And these can vary person to person, but that’s why you should use data to help you generate a map that’s commonly experienced across the board. So for example, the goal could be placing a food takeout order from a mobile app. And then when you look at your touch points and the example I just gave, there’s the experience the user or customer has on their mobile app, but there’s also the steps that you take to pick up your food. So like traveling to the restaurant, parking at the restaurant, picking up the pickup experience at the, then there’s the actions that the user takes.

So what are the actions or behaviors taken by the user at any particular step? So for example, there are some food places that leave your order in a designated area for self-service pickup, and then there are others where you must inform the counter staff where they will retrieve your food behind the counter. Both have different experiences and potential friction points. For me, the latter experience gets iffy when there’s a long line. So do I wait in line or do I go straight to the counter? I personally get social anxiety by going straight to the counter because I often think that some of the customers in line could also be doing the same thing that I’m doing, and so I might be seen as cutting them. So it’s great when establishments recognize these moments and communicate effectively with customers using clear instructions or signage. And then there’s the part of the journey map where you recognize who are all the folks that are involved.

And so you look at each step and you say, who are the key person or persons involved at every step of the way. So for example, when the customer picks up their food at the counter, they may be interacting with the friend counter staff. Okay, so you would put them there as well. Now there’s pain points on your journey map. How did the user or customer feel their experience was at each step of the way? Was there delight, frustration, or anxiety like I mentioned? Then there’s questions asked what are commonly asked questions during each step? For me, this is the first official opportunity on the journey map to begin reducing friction. I think that by answering these questions and presenting them in a way that’s easily discoverable by the user, the less anxiety and friction you’re generating for that user at that particular step. Then finally, there’s opportunity. So opportunity is where we’ll start the process for solution. If you start from left to right, you typically want to look for the first pain points you see. However, opportunities don’t have to be relegated to pain points. So if a step in an experience is going well, there’s still a potential opportunity to innovate or make it even better. But generally speaking, you’ll want to start with the first pain points on your map.

Craig Nishizaki:
Right. That’s a great recap. I appreciate that. And what methods are used to identify key pain points and moments of opportunity or what we call aha moments from a journey map?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So there’s a technique called how might we statements which are actually questions that’s used to help frame the correct problem to be solved. This method is it’s moderately difficult, so it does take some practice, but the goal here is to frame the problem so it’s not too broad and not too narrow, and using the phrase, how might we to remind you that there are a variety of ways to solve the problem, which allows for more innovative thinking. Again, you want to zero in on the pain points that you’ve listed in any particular step. Then you want to reframe that pain point into a how might we question while keeping in mind the customer goal that the dream map is illustrating. So for example, going back to the food pickup scenario, one of the pain points could be waiting in long lines and a knee jerk reaction to solving this could be well just add more counter staff, but that solution wouldn’t necessarily be solving the right problem here using the how might we technique, we could say how might we make it easier for customers who order takeout to pick up their order?

And as I said earlier, you may not get it right the first time, second time or third time when trying to frame the problem. But it does take a few revisions before collectively agreeing that a problem is actually framed properly. So once you get the hang of it, you’ll want to create how might we statements across your journey map and you definitely can have more than one. How might we in any particular step, this is a really great exercise to do as a group, to get through the map quicker and to ensure that, again, “how might we’s” are properly framed?

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, I really love the “How might we” exercise. I think it just opens up a lot of ideas and thoughts around how you can solve something in a new way. What are the most common mistakes businesses make when they are framing those opportunities?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, probably the most common mistake is not framing the problem correctly. So this could be writing a how might we question that is too broad, how might we reduce long lines? Like I mentioned, this statement will produce a ton of ideas, but the problem to be solved here would be lacking. Alternatively, if you wrote a how might we question that was too narrow, like how might we integrate a self-service pickup shelf in the store? This statement already contains a solution that doesn’t allow for alternative ideas. And just to backup real quick, if you don’t even use how my we statements, you might be just like I said earlier, looking to the first solution that comes to mind and oftentimes it’s looking to something that a competitor has done and how do you know that the competitor did it correctly, right? So I think you need to be sure that any solution, and we call this the copycat method, but you have to know that the solution works for you and works for your audience when you come up with these things. And I think that using the how might we statements is the best way to do so.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, I think that’s a great observation. We’ve seen that a lot in talking with different clients on different projects where somebody will jump in with a copycat idea a little too soon if you will. So how do you ensure the opportunities identified align with the business objectives then?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, there’s some methods you could use to prioritize opportunities on your map. And the first one is narrowing down the opportunities by business KPIs. So for example, if you have difficulty generating leads into, let’s just say the top of your sales funnel, you may want to start with this part of the journey map or if you have an issue converting perspective customers at the end of the funnel, that could be a place to start as well. With many digital experiences though, there could be multiple points on your journey map and likely so that are key to your business metrics. And there’s nothing to say that you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. So a part of your journey map could be assigned to a specific group while another part to a different group of individuals that may be better suited to come up with those solutions. In addition to using KPIs for prioritization, you should make sure that the opportunities align with your overall business goals.

Craig Nishizaki:
Those are all great tips, Mike. Now that you frame the opportunities next step is to generate solutions. Can you walk us through how teams can approach ideation effectively?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, so ideation definitely is a creative and collaborative process, and it very well should be, but let me preface by saying that there’s a variety of methods teams can take to generate solutions, but I’ll just be speaking to our process and what has worked for us when facilitating these activities with our clients. We like to use design thinking methodologies using flare and focus in a very structured manner to generate results. Before I talk about how you can approach ideation though, it’s critical that I mentioned the legwork that must be done prior. So whether you are doing this all in-house or working with an agency like ours, you want to identify the key participants first. They will likely be the same individuals who participated in creating the how my lease statements. There should be representation from groups such as design technology and development products, marketing, customer service, sales and leadership.

Really a diverse set of folks, and that’s the intent, right? You want to get a diverse set of minds in a collaborative environment and we found that generally about eight participants is the sweet spot, but ultimately the number of participants is going to be dictated by the duration of your workshop. Next is planning the structured half day workshop or breaking it up into two consecutive days. If the half day is too difficult to schedule, the first half of the workshop should be having all the participants align around the project goal and constraints. And you’ll want to walk all the participants through any existing and newly performed research that’s relevant to the project. This includes customer profiles, quantitative and or qualitative data you may have from interviews and surveys and then the journey maps. You want participants to be aligned on who the customers are, what the pain points are they are feeling, and where they’re feeling it.

We like to say the journey map walkthrough as the second to last activity before we get into ideation. And that’s because once we walk through the journey map, we’ll want to individually do the how might we questions as described earlier after the how might we questions have been written. They need to be affinity mapped and prioritized based on relative importance to KPIs and business goals like we discussed. And once this is done, everyone in the group will go through a dot voting exercise to identify the top one to four. How might we statements to ideate on this is the groundwork you need to lay down before coming up with a single idea.

Craig Nishizaki:
I love that you call it groundwork because it’s definitely foundational to success in ideation. How do you encourage creativity while staying grounded in user needs and business goals?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, aside from laying the groundwork and walking the participant team through it so there’s complete alignment, you should place the established project goal that was decided on in the workshop in a very visible area where you’ll be doing the ideation and just as a reminder throughout the workshop.

Craig Nishizaki:
That makes sense. What techniques or workshop activities do you find most effective for generating ideas?

Michael Woo:
There are so many, but let me name a few “Go To” techniques that we’ve used for our clients. First, for the alignment and ideation workshops that we facilitate the alignment being grounding the participants in the research. We typically split the time right after the how might Wes are established. And right before ideation starts, we have a simple exercise where we give participants some homework to scour the internet for inspiration ideas that may answer the how might we question. We ask that they take screenshots with their laptop or phone if the workshop is remote or bring printouts in person and add a note on what they like about it. But this homework exercise is that it’s a good primer and it gets juices flowing to complete each ideation exercise. We do dot voting where participants place a predetermined number of dots on any great ideas that they see. This is really helpful for getting a visual heat map of the strongest ideas.

And then we move on to other brainstorming exercises called Crazy eights. And I really love this exercise because the goal is to come up with eight crazy ideas in a predetermined timeframe, say like 10 minutes. And what you do is you use simple line drawings and or words, and the intent is to prioritize quantity over quality. And each participant then shares their ideas to the group and the process of sharing begins to stimulate more ideas in everyone’s minds. Then we follow with another dot vote, but as you can see, there’s a pattern of ideation sharing and not voting. Lastly, we do an exercise called Solution Sketch where individuals are taking really strong concepts or taking a really strong concept from the previous exercise and putting meat on the bones, if you will. And before starting this exercise though, for additional stimulus, we like to introduce a brainstorming tool called scamper, and SCAMPER stands for substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another, use, eliminate and reverse.

It’s a great tool for extending how you come up with new ideas by changing your perspective as you brainstorm. So as I said, the solution sketch is really about digging deeper on screens of a workflow or detailing out how a blending page might look or whatever else it may be. And then each person has about 30 to 45 minutes to do this exercise and like the others, they’ll be sharing and not voting as well.

Craig Nishizaki:
So you’re generating a lot of ideas. You said quantity over quality, and with so many potential solutions, prioritizing becomes crucial. So how do you ensure you’re focusing on the opportunities with the greatest impact and how do you balance feasibility with ambition?

Michael Woo:
I’m glad you asked that question. As we are approaching the end of our workshops, to your point, there are typically a lot of really great ideas that are laid out in front of everyone, even though dot voting has narrowed it down. The last step in the process would be to do a impact versus effort exercise with the group. And that’s why it’s important to have representation from the technology and development team as well. This would only be a rough order of magnitude, but the ideas from the solution sketch would be brought over and plotted on a impact versus effort matrix. And then each idea would be considered through the lens of impact on the user, on the business, and the problem against the level effort it would be to implement. And after this is done, you’ll naturally see a prioritization take place. However, there have been times where the separation between ideas were not distinct at all, and that’s why it’s important to have a decider participant, which means that typically it’s somebody within the leadership role who would be accountable for making tough decisions when this happens and they can decide on which ideas to pursue or not.

Now of course, there should be an open discourse before any decision is made and everybody should be able to share their thoughts on why a particular idea would be better than the other. But at the end of all this, what we’re looking for is quick wins on this matrix and what the major projects are to begin the creation of a UX strategy and product planning roadmap

Craig Nishizaki:
In all of this. What role does data play in prioritization?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So as we discussed earlier, data should be factored in during the research phase to identify what the problem areas are and why using various quantitative and qualitative methods. But then data comes into play when deciding how might we opportunities to prioritize through alignment with business KPIs and goals like we talked about. And then at the end of the ideation phase we just spoke, that data should come into play again to help decide which ideas to pursue rather than letting subjective reasoning take place, especially from the decider.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, that all makes a ton of sense. So once you’ve prioritized, it’s time to validate. So before making significant investments, it’s critical to ensure that your solution truly addresses a problem. You don’t want to throw money after an idea without doing that. So Michael, can you share some best practices for testing and validation?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, of course. So imagine some time has a laugh. Designers have analyzed and synthesized all of this information gathered from the design workshop, and their goal should be to explore a number of these selected ideas, really thinking through the mechanics of it all. Perhaps a number of them will be weeded out based on what you’re finding through exploration or through internal reviews, but you still may have two to three very solid ideas. You’ll want to get these ideas or concepts to a point where you can get user feedback as quickly as possible. But in order to do that effectively, you’ll want to create clickable prototypes to simulate the user experience so you can validate interactions and user flows. You can usually get away with myth fidelity designs at this point, but it really depends on the subject matter and your audience. When the prototypes are ready and you’ve created a test plan, you’ll want to do early usability testing with actual users to see which concepts resonate most with them. And usually there’s one that’s favored. Rarely there’s none, but often you might need to create a hybrid design based on elements of several concepts. Traditional usability testing with five users would probably be enough here to get the directional feedback you’re looking for.

Craig Nishizaki:
How do you determine which solution to test first?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, in my opinion, I’d go with the solution with the most unknowns. This might be the edgiest or most left field idea of the bunch, but that way you can either put that idea to bed or you’ll learn something really amazing.

Craig Nishizaki:
Well, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. I think a lot of people would maybe do the opposite. Can you share any examples where validation saves significant time or resources?

Michael Woo:
Well, on every project that we do, usability testing and any iteration occurs, you’re saving time and resources. And the bigger the iteration, the more the savings. It’s widely known that validating product concepts early in the design phase is much more inexpensive than it is changing anything after it’s been developed. And I think the 80 20 rule applies here where 80% of the product’s final cost is determined in the first 20% of the design phase.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, that’s a nugget right there. 80% of the product’s final cost is determined in the first 20% of the design phase. And you’re right, it’s much cheaper and easier to iterate and make changes before any code’s written. That is for sure. So now you’ve validated your solution, you’re ready to implement, but getting buy-in is key. How do you tie these UX efforts back to measurable business outcomes and communicate that value to E stakeholders?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, well, if clear business objectives are incorporated into the project goal, the results of the UX activities that we’ve discussed in this podcast will provide early indicators of these outcomes. The team is hoping for be it increasing conversion rate, loyalty engagement, or cost savings, and those are just name a few. But when we spoke of usability testing a moment ago, that was just an early round of tests to identify directionally where you might take your solution. Now, as I mentioned, you can start to gather several early metrics here that tie back to the business outcomes you’re looking to achieve. But when you perform a later stage usability test, once your design direction has been more fleshed out, you can start to gather even more accurate readings on the design’s potential performance. Then by the time your solution is developed and is launched, you should have the tracking mechanisms in place to gather real data, and the data should mirror what was seen during the design process. The idea is to reduce as much risk as possible by launch and to arrive at a level of predictability for the business. So it would be worthwhile to benchmark your data so you can capture the measurables before and after to convey the value of the UX impact to business leaders. And once these leaders see the real impact that UX can have, it will be easy or easier to get the buy-in you need in the future.

Craig Nishizaki:
That’s great. What additional tips do you have for making a strong business case for UX initiatives?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, I like to call this, we’ve talked about this before, but the challenge within the challenge, meaning aside from the main goal of solving for your customer or user experience, for some, you need to prove internally that what you do has a meaningful impact on the business. So some tips to share first is really understanding your internal audience. So who will need to be convinced and what methods do they usually respond well to? So for example, do they respond better to high fidelity designs because they lack imagination? Or would a clickable prototype be better suited for demonstrating a workflow? Should you ensure that there’s no inaccurate data or Greek messaging in the designs? Because even though you tell them it’s placeholder, it will be a drawback in the review. Make sure to focus on metrics or focus on metrics your internal audience will care about.

Okay, and then a second one is connecting your user experience to business goals. So look at storytelling because it’s very important and highlight how specific parts of the user experience are intended to impact business KPIs. I always say this, but don’t get mired in the design weeds that mean nothing to non-designers. And then also, if applicable, explain how your user experience may align with broader strategic objectives such as market differentiation or customer focus. And then use data and case studies whenever possible because the data to help back up your claims is always a good thing. And remember, objective versus subjective reasoning is how you should be communicating. Okay. Next is bring in the user’s voice. So we found that, again, sharing findings from research with video clips or quotes or pain points to help humanize a problem is extremely helpful. And then if you can demonstrate ROI, if possible, calculate the potential returns from these UX investments and there’s formulas online to help you do that, or you can highlight the cost of not doing anything. And then lastly, and I think most importantly is start small and then scale. If you already know that leadership is risk averse to big change, I would start small. Go for the quick wins, and from there, build the momentum you need for larger investments to follow.

Craig Nishizaki:
Man, that’s all great stuff. That again, is like a masterclass in how to communicate the value effectively. This has been a really insightful, really good conversation. To recap what we’ve covered, the key steps that follow the journey map or follow journey mapping, framing opportunities, generating solutions, prioritizing those solutions, validating those solutions, and finally communicating their impact. Before we wrap up, Mike, do you have any other final advice for business leaders that want to take their journey maps to the next level and drive real change in their organizations?

Michael Woo:
Yeah. I know we’ve talked a lot today, and it might seem daunting to most, but I would say simply follow a framework like we’ve discussed today and put together a detailed plan. Consider the variables that we just talked about in terms of how to communicate to leadership effectively to get buy-in. These decisions need to be factored in to the plan very early on to keep things moving smoothly.

Craig Nishizaki:
Well, that’s great. Well, that’s it for today’s episode. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, please like and click subscribe and join us next time as we explore more innovative approaches to enhance your products and services, optimize customer interactions, and ultimately drive success for your organization. Tune in, take action and design your way to success. We’ll see you next time.

Outro:
Thanks for tuning in to Results by Design. If you liked this episode, be sure to share and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We are also playing on all your favorite audio streaming podcast platforms, so stay connected and join us for the next one. Results by Design is brought to you by Uptalk. Our mission is to equip business leaders like you with the knowledge and tools needed to leverage UX methods and strategies to achieve tangible business outcomes and create lasting value. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or just starting to explore the world of ux, results by Design is your go-to resource for unlocking the potential of user experience to achieve remarkable results. Tune in, take action, and design your way to success.