By Somongkol Teng
Are you wondering if your youth program offers a positive experience to youth and their families? Are you wondering what their journey through your program is like? Are you looking for in-depth information and stories about their experiences that a quantitative survey might not reveal?
If you say “yes” to any or all of these questions, you should try journey mapping, a revealing evaluation method.
Beyond visualization, journey mapping can also serve as a powerful story-mining tool. The participatory nature of this method allows your customers to share stories and feedback about their experiences that you might not otherwise hear.
To start, each person in the room brainstormed a list of touchpoints along their 4-H journey. We wrote each of these on sticky notes. As a group, we organized the touchpoints along a continuum or journey, which we broke down into stages from pre-enrollment all the way to county fair and re-enrollment. Touchpoint by touchpoint, they rated each one, based on their own experiences during the previous year. They used a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 for horrible and 5 for awesome.
By the end of the rating activity, we had a draft visual that showed the high and low points of each family’s experience.
Next, we took a step back and walked through the whole map together. We reviewed all the touchpoints, one by one, and discussed their meanings and the reasons for their given ratings. This was where a wealth of stories and feedback came to life.
By the end of the evening, we had gained a visual understanding of the participating families’ first-year journeys through 4-H. We heard many rich, powerful first-hand stories and feedback that can inform and shape our programming efforts and retention strategies.
Melissa and I plan to develop training and user toolkits for this method. As we move forward, we also hope to pilot this process with more counties. Let us know if you are interested in taking a rewarding journey through your own program by trying it out.
You are welcome to comment on this blog post. We encourage civil discourse, including spirited disagreement. We will delete comments that contain profanity, pornography or hate speech--any remarks that attack or demean people because of their sex, race, ethnic group, etc.--as well as spam.
Are you wondering if your youth program offers a positive experience to youth and their families? Are you wondering what their journey through your program is like? Are you looking for in-depth information and stories about their experiences that a quantitative survey might not reveal?If you say “yes” to any or all of these questions, you should try journey mapping, a revealing evaluation method.
What is journey mapping?
Journey mapping has its origins in customer experience and human-centered design. It's an evaluation method that can help you to visualize a customer’s journey through a program or service. In other words, a journey map can show you the path a stakeholder — youth, family member, volunteer or staff — takes through your program. It can reveal where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Research on customer experience shows that every touchpoint a customer has with your organization has an impact on their interest, satisfaction and loyalty.Beyond visualization, journey mapping can also serve as a powerful story-mining tool. The participatory nature of this method allows your customers to share stories and feedback about their experiences that you might not otherwise hear.
How I have used journey mapping in a youth program
Recently, I embarked on a pilot journey mapping project with my fellow Extension Educators Melissa Persing and Abby Wagner. We looked at the experiences of first-year 4-H member families in Dakota County. We kicked it off with a small group of first-year 4-H families by inviting them for an evening of discussion and journey mapping.To start, each person in the room brainstormed a list of touchpoints along their 4-H journey. We wrote each of these on sticky notes. As a group, we organized the touchpoints along a continuum or journey, which we broke down into stages from pre-enrollment all the way to county fair and re-enrollment. Touchpoint by touchpoint, they rated each one, based on their own experiences during the previous year. They used a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 for horrible and 5 for awesome.
By the end of the rating activity, we had a draft visual that showed the high and low points of each family’s experience.
 |
| The formalized journey map I created with Microsoft PowerPoint |
Next, we took a step back and walked through the whole map together. We reviewed all the touchpoints, one by one, and discussed their meanings and the reasons for their given ratings. This was where a wealth of stories and feedback came to life.
By the end of the evening, we had gained a visual understanding of the participating families’ first-year journeys through 4-H. We heard many rich, powerful first-hand stories and feedback that can inform and shape our programming efforts and retention strategies.
Melissa and I plan to develop training and user toolkits for this method. As we move forward, we also hope to pilot this process with more counties. Let us know if you are interested in taking a rewarding journey through your own program by trying it out.
You are welcome to comment on this blog post. We encourage civil discourse, including spirited disagreement. We will delete comments that contain profanity, pornography or hate speech--any remarks that attack or demean people because of their sex, race, ethnic group, etc.--as well as spam.
Thanks for sharing this information Mongkol. I love that it's an interactive way for stories to be shared. I also appreciate that the process can help us to build a better customer service experience. Do you have any lessons learned from your experience that could help others trying this out?
ReplyDeleteOur biggest challenge during this process was recruiting enough families to attend the meeting. The lesson here is to leave enough time for the invitation to go out and have back up plans ready. We had a few people that backed out at the last minute.
DeleteAnother lesson we learned was the importance of staying objective with our facilitator role. We realized how easy it was for us to get sucked in into the conversation and offer our own inputs vs. letting the family giving us theirs. At the end of the day, we want this to be about and to come from the families. :)
Hi, Mongkol. How did you sell the participants on the idea? Did you have some kids of incentive? How did they like the process? It's a very interesting eval idea.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, as far as recruitment goes, we are still figuring this all out too. We weren't as successful during our first session, and we are hoping to get better at it next time.
DeleteOne thing we learned was that it was helpful to work on this with the local EE to identify and have him or her invite the families. We tried to be upfront about what journey mapping is and why it is important for us to hear from them.
We received very positive feedback from the families that attended the meeting. They were happy that we value their perspectives and that their inputs will help make the experience better for other new 4-H families.
This is cool. I'd love to hear about any story ideas that come out of it. I'm a PR person, but our stories don't always have to be the big, happy ones to be meaningful. If there are things you learned from a new member that the program is addressing, that could be interesting to readers too. Sometimes, readers even identify better with those.
ReplyDeleteFascinating process. I am definitely interested in seeing the toolkit you put together for this.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I will for sure let you and everyone when it is ready. :)
DeleteThis is such a brilliant process! What important conversations I can imagine coming out of this. I can see how it could also really help reveal our blind spots, potentially. Thanks for sharing--I look forward to the tools we can use to replicate it.
ReplyDeleteThank you! :)
DeleteMongkol, I think this is brilliant. I'm wondering if you think that the group developing the touchpoints was a critical part of the process, or if providing specific aspects we'd like feedback on would be as effective. As a local educator, I always have certain areas I'd like to gain more feedback on, where other places (like 4HOnline enrollment) I already have a good idea how they would be rated.
ReplyDeleteHi there! Thank you so much for stopping by. That was a very good question.
DeleteA journey map does not necessarily have to a cover a full range of experiences like what I created. You can also narrow it down to focus merely on a small part/aspect of your program - i.e. new member orientation, county fair, day camp, etc.
While it's good to know what we truly care about, allowing your participants to brainstorm the touchpoints might reveal "blind spots" that we, as staff, might overlook.
If you still feel the need to dig deep into some of those specific aspects, that's where the discussion following the rating activity will come in handy.
I hope this helps clarify your question. Please let me know if you'd like to chat more about this!
I really like the idea of journey mapping! It's a great opportunity to identify touch - points and potentially be able to dig into specific opportunities when the rating of the experience is consistent or different between individuals. I appreciate the human touch component and the time commitment involved. I look forward to the resources being development and hearing more.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your support. Please let me or Melissa know if anyone from your region would like to have this process done in their county.
Delete