UX Diary #4 — Ecosystem Map. Hello again! The UX Diary keeps going…
Tags: Ecosystem Map, UX Design, Uxdiary, Bagaturworks, Ui Ux Design

Ecosystem map is a visualization of the company’s digital properties, the connections between them and their purpose in the overall marketing strategy. Gives you insights around how to leverage new and existing assets to achieve the brand’s business goals.

An ecosystem map is the absolute best way to quickly understand a client’s business environment. It shows all the high-level exchanges of value between the client and the groups with which is interacting. An ecosystem is the term given to asses of products, services and people that function together in a symbiotic way.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we are going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem. — Stephen Elop (CEO, Nokia)

The Basics

The mean of ecosystem word is a network of people interacting with products and services which is differently from biological term. In UX Design, ecosystem includes:

users,

the practices they perform,

they perform, the information they use and share,

they use and share, the people whorn they interact,

whorn they interact, the services available to them,

available to them, the devices they use,

they use, the channels through which they communicate.

Pain Points

An ecosystem map should also include known pain points at all levels.

Who, What, When, Where, How.

Ecosystem thinking, likewise, is the inquiry method used to analyze and understand ecosystems, both the problems they pose as well as the business opportunities they might present. Instead of focuising on a single product or service, however, designer who practive ecosystem thinking evaluate user behavior at the intersection of various inflection points.

Who are our users?

What practices do they perform?

What information do they need?

With whom do they interact?

What services are available to them?

What devices do they use?

Through what channels do they communicate?

Answers to these questions provide designers with all of the row data they need in order to better understand the ecosystem in which they are working. Turning that data into actionable information is the job of ecosystem maps.

Why Do We Need Ecosystem Maps?

1- It gives us the big picture.

The absolute best way to quickly get information about the client’s current business environment is to start collaborating on an Ecosystem Map.

2- It helps us to identify important details.

Anticiate problems and need the client may not see.

Uncover important details the client didn’t mention.

Clarify our understanding so we don’t make any wrong assumptions.

3- It guides the rest of kickoff.

A good ecosystem map should give you the basics for creating context scenarios and user personas. As a team, it will help you start talking about information and relationships at the level of detail you’d put in these other documents. By starting with the Ecosystem Map, you’re essentially getting a head start on creating two of the most influential UX artifacts you can produce.

Mapping an Ecosystem

The Steps

Understand users and their goals, Mapping the activities that users conduct in service of their goals, Mapping the information, services, devices and channels that users employ in service of their activities, Mapping the moments in which users perform their activities, Narrowing down the discrete set of moments upon which designer might focus.

Creating a Map

Like all user-centered design endeavors, ecosystem mapping begins with resarch; interviews, observations, questionaries, analyses of the goals toward which users are working as well as how users about accomplishing their goals. Next we draw or map everything we know.

What is it look like?

Before observe a complete ecosystem map, I created a text based-basic one for beginning. This map includes knowledge of customer researchs, complete digital marketing strategies, technological benchmarks and financial reports. The brand is called Puppety which is an IOT product serves pet owners as a GPS-based smart collar. I was a part of Puppety Team as a digital marketer and UI/UX designer and today, the project suspended because of Turkey’s non-stabil economical situation.

Well, let’s look at a basic ecosystem map.

Puppety Ecosystem Map created via xtensio.com

Ecosystem map is one of the keys for business starters which is opening competiton knowledge doors.

Let’s observe a complete and illustrated ecosystem map.