Story Mapping

Story mapping is method for brainstorming. It can be used to determine the steps in a processs or the features of a product or service. What I know of the technique is taken largely from experience and from Jeff Patton’s book called Story Mapping.

This is an activity that can be done internally or with users/customers. I have led multiple story mapping sessions, most of them interally. But the example below was with real customers for a merger and acqusition application.

There were four participants from 2 banks. As an icebreaker, we did a practice story map where each participant wrote down on sticky notes everything they did from waking up till the walked out the door to go to work. They then aggregated and organized their stickies in order on a board. Then we did the same thing, but for every step of an acquisition, from inquiry to closing the deal.

This was a great activity for the users as they saw simularities and differences in their mental models. Though, this sort of revelation is probably better for people working together. For my employer, this user created model gave a better understanding of what customers are doing, where their pain points are and how software could solve them.

What a physical story map looks like.