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Hot off the press

December 1, 2022

Designing rituals: an interview with Adam Cochrane

Katharina Rainer

Adam standing in front of a board with sketch notes

November 15, 2022

Trauma-responsive design: an interview with Rachael Dietkus

Katharina Rainer

November 8, 2022

Customer experience online course [Free]

Isabel Grillmayr

Notebook and open book sitting on a couch with a yellow and a blue pillow, next to it a table with a cup of coffee and another book.

November 3, 2022

What is Customer Journey Management and how to get started?

Katharina Rainer

Visualization of a journey map hierarchy with three zoom levels and dedicated journey map managers.

Browse all articles

photo of a young female doctor doing eye surgery

November 2, 2022

11 impressive examples of how to design healthcare experiences

Design thinking in healthcare is not only there to develop services that are shiny and exciting. It also helps to make unpleasant moments smoother and easier to consume. Using healthcare services is not something that people enjoy. In this field, it’s rather about providing services that take away insecurity and pain. But we collected a few great practice examples from all over the world to demonstrate that sometimes it doesn’t take much to ease difficult situations. Design thinking in healthcare is a process of improving patient experiences. It requires healthcare leaders to empathize with patients, investigate their pain points, and test solutions to make patients' experiences more bearable.

Isabel Grillmayr

A group of people standing around a bar and smiling into the camera.

October 25, 2022

Understanding gender to design tourism services: an interview with Sylvia Prunthaller

Professionals working in the experience innovation field represent an array of skills and knowledge: designers and managers, researchers and engineers, data-driven and creative folks, CX, UX, EX… the profession has many faces. We are thrilled to have a truly inspiring CX expert share some of her background, her learnings, and a few insights into her work: please meet Sylvia Prunthaller!

Katharina Rainer

A hand taking a photo of a journey map with a smartphone.

October 20, 2022

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is not just another deliverable you attach to a project and then forget about.At Smaply, we think a journey map can become the central hub for customer experience insights – visualizing the customer journey holistically, end-to-end. Read on if you’d like to find out what customers experience when they use your service or purchase your product (or, when they fail to do so). We'll show you how to help your customers navigate your service, no matter how complex it is.

Antonia Cramer

print of a table and a graph next to a notebook

October 18, 2022

11 good reasons to fight for your customer experience budget in times of recession

In economically stable times, we try to design customer experiences (CX) that make us stand out from the competition and that ideally make our customers loyal and share their experiences with others. In other words: we try to get rid of experience debt and create products and services that meet customers’ expectations. However, we tend to forget a crucial element of any good relationship: the promises we give need to be valid in good and in bad times.

Michael Steingress

Marc standing on a stage with people watching him and a presentation with a white slide in the background, that says: "Disclaimer, I don't know anything about the future"

October 4, 2022

Working towards clear goals: Marc Fonteijn

Professionals working in the experience innovation field represent an array of skills and knowledge: Designers and managers, researchers and engineers, data-driven and creative folks, CX, UX, EX… the profession has many faces. We are thrilled to have a truly inspiring CX expert share some of his background, his learnings, and a few insights into his work: please meet Marc Fonteijn!

Katharina Rainer

August 31, 2022

10 things you only know if you work in service design

Working in the field of service design takes patience and dedication. It does not matter in what phase of the innovation process you are – you’re probably familiar with the following ten situations.

Zsofia Szatmari-Margitai

illustration of a a journey map with sticky notes and a pen

August 17, 2022

Best Customer Journey Mapping Tools [Free & Paid]

Let’s do a reality check – Do you know how your customers interact with your business at various touchpoints? What their pain points are? How you can optimize their journey? No? Too bad.

Katharina Rainer

August 1, 2022

Service design glossary

We all make assumptions, every day. One of the biggest ones we often make is that the people who are listening to us will understand the meaning of what we are saying. Sometimes this mutual clarity of understanding will be inconsequential, however, sometimes it might actually matter. So let's take a little bit of time to get on the same page, reduce some communication errors and bring some more ease into our communication. A good first step on this journey will be to clarify the language we are using, and what it means.

Cambrian Berry

colorful wall with sign: "accessible entry"

June 21, 2022

38 examples of how to design for diversity, inclusion and accessibility

Users of products and services are diverse; they have different needs, abilities, interests, and desires. As service designers / CX managers we must consider diversity, and design for it. But how can we make products and services inclusive and accessible to everyone? We collected a few best practice examples from all over the world to show: Sometimes it doesn’t take much to design for diversity.

Isabel Grillmayr

June 14, 2022

Legal design: how to innovate the experience of law services with journey mapping

For the legal profession, customer experience is of the utmost importance. Legal practitioners are constantly in contact with people in delicate situations. May it be going through a divorce, being accused of a crime, or having experienced severe financial or bodily damages, oftentimes the very fate of the affected individuals is at stake.

Andreas Seelos

Cambrian Berry in front of a workshop wall

May 31, 2022

Catalyzing innovation: an interview with Cambrian Berry

Katharina Rainer

Shoes and handbags displayed in a nice store.

May 25, 2022

7 products and services that improve experiences in shopping and retail

In some cases, small changes and improvements make a big difference for customers when consuming a product or service. In the following examples you get an idea of how service design could improve shopping and retail experiences. Enjoy!

Isabel Grillmayr

May 17, 2022

Everything is connected: an interview with Christof Zürn

Professionals working in the experience innovation field represent an array of skills and knowledge: Designers and managers, researchers and engineers, data-driven and creative folks, CX, UX, EX… the profession has many faces. We are thrilled to have a renowned CX expert share some of his background, knowledge, and a few insights into his work: please meet Christof Zürn!

Katharina Rainer

Visualization of a journey map showing multiple channels

May 11, 2022

Ask Marc – about managing CX across online and offline channels

In this webinar, we talked about how to manage customer experience across online and offline channels. The main question was what the challenge of omnichannel customer experience management is. Furthermore, we looked into the details of how you can research experiences beyond digital analytics. Also we will look into why qualitative data is so important and how you can manage experiences if they happen out of your reach.

Marc Stickdorn

Gerry Scullion talking with a group of people.

May 3, 2022

Service designers as facilitators of conversations: an interview with Gerry Scullion

Professionals working in the experience innovation field represent an array of skills and knowledge: Designers and managers, researchers and engineers, data-driven and creative folks, CX, UX, EX… the profession has many faces. We are thrilled to have a renowned CX expert share some of his background, his learnings, and a few insights into his work: please meet Gerry Scullion!

Katharina Rainer

A photo of houses on the hillside with colorful facades

April 26, 2022

8 products and services that improve customer experience in architecture, interior, and building

In the following images, you can see some extraordinary experiences in the field of architecture, interior design, and building that might be helpful and convenient –or, in some cases, even life-saving. The examples range from easier evacuation in case of emergency, over clever space-saving hacks in hotel rooms, to a practical and fancy-looking way of storing skateboards in schools.

Isabel Grillmayr

laptop with lettering about designing simple experiences

April 12, 2022

15 inspiring service design quotes for a customer-centric mindset

What is service design? One question, many potential responses. In the end, there is no such thing as the one and only answer to it. It’s a mindset, a way of working and thinking, something you have to experience and embrace. We’ve collected a few voices that instantiate the spirit of service design.

Isabel Grillmayr

Notebook with sticky notes and a pen. One note says: Design a feedback form.

April 5, 2022

5 Principles of service design to make your CX project a success (oops, actually it’s 6!)

We all know about the power of customer experience. When it comes to improving the experience of a service or product, basing the innovation project on service design principles may be fundamental to achieving your goals consistently.

Juan Alves

a man standing next to a road with headphones, waiting for the bus and listening to something

March 29, 2022

The 30 best podcasts about customer experience, service design, design thinking, human-centered design, UX/UI…

Working on customer experience needs expertise in diverse fields: service design, architecture, UX/UI design, business and management, ... just to name a few. Therefore, it can be hard to find the right podcast for yourself. We’ve collected a few of them for you to learn more about the CX focus area of your choice, and listed them with the publisher's description.

Katharina Rainer

March 22, 2022

Omnichannel customer journey maps – designing experiences across channels

Have you ever visited a store, tried on some clothes, used your smartphone to compare prices – and in the end bought everything online? Undeniably, omnichannel experiences are becoming more and more habitual, and we don’t need to go too far to verify consumers’ behavioral changes.

Juan Alves

A stakeholder map paper template with sticky notes to visualize the stakeholders.

March 8, 2022

3 efficient stakeholder mapping techniques

Curious about stakeholder mapping techniques that can help you to improve engagement during a project? In this article you will not only learn why, but also how to use stakeholder maps.

Juan Alves

A friendly doctor looking after a woman who just gets her bloodpressure checked

February 23, 2022

Journey mapping in healthcare: innovating patient experience

Healthcare services are among the most essential human needs. It does not matter what place on earth, culture, age, gender, predisposition – at some point we all need medical help. And in those sensitive moments, we are glad to have a health system where we can trust both the processes, and the human interaction.

Katharina Rainer

a bike standing in a room with art in the background

February 22, 2022

10 surprising examples of customer experience innovation from traffic and transportation

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make a product or service come with a better customer experience. Here are some examples where (service) designers, based on the pain points they found and after some out-of-the-box thinking, further developed services that sometimes even go beyond the initial purpose.

Isabel Grillmayr

February 15, 2022

Smaply's hottest features

Our journey mapping tool Smaply is based on our users' requests: what they need and what they wish for, that's what they get. And this is the result: Smaply's newest feature releases. Check out the most recent updates of the tool and learn how it can help you better manage your customer experience projects.

Klaus Schwarzenberger

A person looking at wireframes, sticky notes and drawings. It seems that they aim at improving an app's interface

February 9, 2022

Journey maps: all you need to know

What really matters for customers when they use a service or purchase something? Well, you may have heard about journey maps and how they are powerful tools for organizations to answer that question appropriately. It's for this reason that you're here, isn't it?

Juan Alves

January 26, 2022

How to create a visually appealing journey map in 6 steps

Visual clues are extremely important when creating journey maps. We are sure that you’ve come across the idiom “a picture says a thousand words”, which in the case of journey mapping proves to be true. Humans are brilliant at understanding and empathizing with images – make use of that! There are numerous ways to make your journey map visually appealing.

Isabel Grillmayr

people collaboratively working on a pen and paper journey map with colorful post its

January 21, 2022

12 tips on how to create a customer journey map that provides real insights

At the first glimpse, creating a customer journey map seems to be an intuitive thing. You’re working on projects related to customer experience every day and have a clear gut feeling about the customer journey anyway. So all you need to do is to use that paper template and some sticky notes to bring your thoughts on paper, right? Well... No.

Katharina Rainer

the melted gondola, piece of art placed in Aspen to point towards climate change

January 11, 2022

Planet-centered design: how service design can help combat global warming

As the world is warming, discussions about how to reverse it are also heating up. World leaders recently met at the COP26 to hammer out the requirements, actions, and measures that need to be taken to tackle global warming. One thing is clear, global warming is an issue that can no longer be ignored, and requires global action. Individuals, families, communities, government, and yes, service designers must change behaviors to a more sustainable mindset.

Paul Cook

two smiling faces (Marc Stickdorn and Nicole Broeckling)

December 16, 2021

Ask Marc – becoming a human-centered organization

In this webinar, we talked about how to become a human-centered organization: What's the first step that you can take? What are challenges that you are likely to face? What are chances for first success moments? And who do you need to involve in the process?

Marc Stickdorn

December 1, 2021

20 design thinking books to learn from and get inspired

We want books that are eye-opening; that show us the great work and initiatives of other people who care about making the world a better place; that inspire us to embrace, or even initiate change. And definitely books that remind us of our self-efficacy; that show us we can become more hands-on, become part of change processes.

Zsofia Szatmari-Margitai

loose puzzle pieces that indicate a challenge

November 24, 2021

Top 10 customer experience challenges faced by organizations and how to overcome them

Organizations are often not alone with the customer experience (CX) struggles they face and they grapple with rapidly changing contexts and challenges. How an organization faces these challenges can determine whether it succeeds, or fails as it engages with its customers. So, within these conditions and with an ever increasing number of CX challenges being faced by businesses, what options do we have? In this article we will explore ten of the most pressing customer experience challenges being faced by businesses in 2022 and how journey mapping can assist in overcoming them.

Cambrian Berry

The lobby and waiting room of a hospital that looks very welcoming.

November 12, 2021

Social impact through service design: case studies from health and wellbeing

Three inspiring service design case studies that showcase people creating positive change.

Cambrian Berry

visualization of power point slides on grey background

September 17, 2021

Ask Marc – about presenting journey maps

In this webinar, we talked about presenting customer journey maps: How to approach different audiences, how to tailor journey map details to stakeholder groups, and about types of visualizations and exports for different use cases. After watching this session, you’ll know how to use journey maps as boundary objects to bridge organizational and communicational silos.

Marc Stickdorn

August 31, 2021

Case Study with Deutsche Telekom: how choosing a customer-centred strategy can help drive innovation

Deutsche Telekom has been one of the earliest customers of Smaply. Now they share their experience with embracing journey mapping as a company.

Cambrian Berry

August 3, 2021

Manage employee experience with journey maps

A holistic approach towards employee experience does not start with the onboarding process nor does it finish with the offboarding process. Instead it actually starts with attracting your employees - the candidate experience - and possibly ends with re-engaging your alumni - alumni experience. Employee experience involves a broad and extremely varied range of many different areas and levels of employee journeys and each of these journeys deserves dedicated attention.

Melina Savvidis

Display panes at an airport showing the departure and arrival of planes.

July 6, 2021

Journey mapping in tourism

Service design, and specifically journey mapping, has huge potential to change the travel & tourism industry in a positive way. As individual suppliers harness the potential journey mapping offers, they can craft more compelling experiences for their guests. Whether approaches are applied to services in a small hotel, or within a large destination management organization (DMO), journey maps can be created to suit different contexts and use cases within the travel industry.

Isabel Grillmayr

Sheets of paper with a cup, a mouse and a pen.

June 30, 2021

Journey mapping in government services

When was the last time you used a government service? Sometimes it can be hard to bring a particular service to mind because they often play such a background role in our lives, only standing out during moments when they inconvenience us. However, in people's everyday lives they benefit from a vast range of different government services that support the way that they, as well as their communities, are able to function.

Cambrian Berry

Laptop with text: I design and develop experiences that make people's lives simple.

June 17, 2021

Service design implementation (Guide part 4)

When it comes to implementing service design, the first step many organizations take is often to run training programs for their team. Even though such workshop-style training is great to raise awareness of the topic and give a good overview of different tools and methods, it often remains hard for participants to apply the learnings in their day-to-day work. In this article, we will share some lessons learned on how to successfully bring service design into an organization so that it can be used to supplement and enhance existing ways of working.

Antonia Cramer

A wooden table with a keyboard, a mouse, a phone, pens and other tools to work.

May 27, 2021

16 digital tools for people who want to understand and shape customer experience

Great software can be an enabler for helping organizations practice and integrate CX in their work. At Smaply we naturally value and use our own tools, however we also make use of a range of other tools that help us engage in the CX activities that need to be done within our organization. Great tools allow us to do work more efficiently, help us communicate better and bring order to our daily tasks.

Cambrian Berry

A woman working with a laptop, a cup of tea and a college block next to her.

May 19, 2021

What are service design tools? (Guide part 3)

When talking about service design, many people think of a tool set, maybe a customer journey map hanging on a wall and people pointing at sticky notes. In many ways, it is these templates and tools that sum up service design in many people's minds. In this article, we dive into the subject of service design tools, what they are and how they can be implemented during the different phases of a design process.

Antonia Cramer

a group of people working together on a UX project

May 12, 2021

The service design process (Guide part 2)

Service design always follows an iterative design process, meaning that it follows cycles of learning, prototyping and improvement. Similar to design in general, service design is constantly evolving and improving. In this article, we explain the key components of a service design process and offer a framework for creating your own.

Antonia Cramer

a bunch of colorful sticky notes with a pen on top

April 29, 2021

The basics of service design (Guide part 1)

Service design, or design thinking, is often linked with terms such as innovation (process), change, and improvement. But what exactly is it? And why is it important? In this article, we will explore some of the principles of service design, as well as the positive impacts it can have on your customers’ lives and the performance of your business. Learn more about the principles of service design and the impact it can have on your business.

Antonia Cramer

vendor passing bread to buyer in a bakery

April 13, 2021

Practical service design approaches that help us build relationships with our stakeholders

The field of service design has emerged from a growing need for organizations to reconnect and re-establish closer relationships with their customers, staff members and other essential stakeholders. Through better relationships and a renewed sense of clarity for customer experience, many organizations have realized the potential that service design approaches offer for improving their ability to innovate, generating service value as well as improving the lives of the people they are trying to help. In this article, we will explore three vital relationship values, namely, communication, adaptability and support. We will also explore on a practical level how we can use service design tools in ways that bring these values to life in our organization to improve and strengthen our relationships.

Cambrian Berry

many hands, each holding a lego play figure

March 25, 2021

Three essential relationships that help us deliver great services

Relationships are the invisible forces that bind our customers, employees, and other stakeholders together. By taking the time to understand the challenges and needs faced by each of these groups, we are much better placed to develop services that will each deliver towards their desired outcomes.

Cambrian Berry

MacBook standing on a desk. On the screen a yellow couch is visible.

March 4, 2021

Create an e-commerce customer journey map with a free tool

Customer journey mapping in e-commerce is a diagram that illustrates the steps your customers go through in engaging with your online business. It starts when they first become aware of your products, to completing a purchase. It can extend to after-purchase care.

Antonia Cramer

visualization of three different types of workshop groups on grey background

February 18, 2021

Ask Marc – about service design workshops

In this session, we talked about service design workshops: how to run a successful service design workshop? What are the upsides and downsides of in-person workshops and digital workshops? And how to connect the two worlds together?

Marc Stickdorn

arrows pointing upwards on yellow background

February 17, 2021

White paper: scaling service design in organizations

This white paper outlines how to scale service design in an organization. It is the sequel to "Embedding service design in an organization". Starting with a short introduction on the difference of embedding and scaling service design, it then offers 10 tips from Marc and numerous quotes from other service design experts.

Marc Stickdorn

emotional journey of three personas on grey background

February 16, 2021

Ask Marc – measuring service design impact

How do you know if your service design project has been successful? How do you prove if your changes and improvements had impact? How can you use numbers to convince others of the effect of prior service design activities so you get budget for the next ones? In this session, we'll talk about measuring service design, the horrible experiences NPS and driver analysis can cause, and the importance of impact controlling.

Marc Stickdorn

little kids waiting for school to start in front of a building

February 2, 2021

Journey mapping in education

Education has the power to change people's lives and the world we live in. By developing an understanding of the experiences students go through, we are much better prepared when creating meaningful educational journeys and we can thus achieve better outcomes with our students. Journey mapping can help us understand and improve the education journey.

Cambrian Berry

January 20, 2021

How to Create a Customer Journey Map [With a Free Tool]

In this article we explain how you can map a customer journey. We created a step by step explanation on how to create a customer journey map that you can use as an instruction.

Monika Kisielewska

December 22, 2020

Ask Marc – about methodology silos

People call ‘it’ service design, design thinking, (holistic) ux design, experience design, to name just a few. Sometimes, organizations even have different teams under these labels – although they actually do the same stuff. On the other side, what some organizations call ‘service design’ might be completely different to what others call ‘service design’. Language matters. And the labels we use, often end up in methodology silos.

Marc Stickdorn

photo of a sign that warns about the wet floor and danger of slipping

December 3, 2020

Reducing harm through service design - how we can positively shape our future

Creating a better world means both improving the way in which we deliver services now, while also improving the outcomes that result from our services in the future. Taking an ethical look at our service delivery, how can we continue to improve the ways in which we influence individuals, communities, and the systems that support life on our planet?

Cambrian Berry

December 1, 2020

Journey map examples from different industries (CJM tutorial part 4)

On this page, you get a collection of some great journey map examples from different industries, such as airports, e-commerce, marketing, or telecommunication.

Isabel Grillmayr

A man playing chess and drinking coffee.

November 18, 2020

Journey mapping in strategic planning

Customer centricity is the core of every successful business. Only if we plan and deliver products that solve real customer needs, our business will survive in the long run. Hence, having a clear understanding of what the customer needs and how we can meet these needs better than any other actor on the market is key to sustainable success.

Katharina Rainer

Candidate journey mapping improving the hiring process

November 11, 2020

Journey mapping in recruiting

As recruiters, we know: The candidate has moved into a powerful position and has changed our game. It’s not only on the candidate to apply and perform, but also on us recruiters to convince the candidate to become part of our organization. It’s on us to leave a good impression and to provide a great candidate experience in order to stand out and compete with other organizations.

Melina Savvidis

Selfie of Marc Stickdorn while recording a podcast

November 10, 2020

Podcast: talking about Journey Map Operations at 'This is HCD'

In this podcast, Gerry Scullion and I talk about Journey Map Operations and how projects in organizations impact customer and employee experience.

Marc Stickdorn

November 9, 2020

Journey mapping in banking

Like many other sectors, the world of banking is facing persistent pressure to innovate within a society undergoing rapid technological, environmental and social change. Due to these changes, the way we engage with banks and access money isn't the same as it was five years ago. Short: the customer experience in banking has changed – and it's highly likely it won't be the same five years from now into the future.

Cambrian Berry

October 21, 2020

Journey mapping in SaaS

As a software-as-a-service company that develops SaaS tools for journey mapping, this topic is at the very heart of our culture. Throughout the last few years, journey mapping has grown deeper and deeper into our daily routines, now we are using it along the entire business lifecycle, with the entire team, and not only on an operational level but also on a strategic level too.

Klaus Schwarzenberger

Journey map focussed on the emotional experience of a persona

October 12, 2020

In the end it’s all about communication: how to present journey maps to different audiences

Journey maps are a powerful tool for communicating customer experience both within our organization as well as with a variety of different stakeholders. The way in which information is presented plays an important role in engaging different groups of people allowing them to understand what is being communicated as well as using it as a basis for better decision making.

Cambrian Berry

October 9, 2020

Ask Marc – about stakeholder maps

In this session, we talked about the what and why of stakeholder maps, how to create and analyze them, and other types of system maps (value network maps and ecosystem maps). Also you'll get to know different use cases of stakeholder maps.

Marc Stickdorn

person looking at data on a wall, trying to find a way to cluster it

October 8, 2020

Customer experience data: how to structure CX data in the world of service design

So we have spent weeks and months collecting all types of customer data. By conducting interviews with our customers, doing desktop research, hosting workshops with our team, digging into KPIs, as well as many other approaches. Through this process, we have generated a large pool of high-quality insights – so large that it has become increasingly fragmented and difficult to find specific knowledge. So, what do we do now? How do we make a start when it comes to data management so that our resources are stored in clear, logical ways that are easy to access when we need them?

Cambrian Berry

person looking at customer experience insights

October 1, 2020

Why is journey mapping important? (CJM tutorial part 2)

In this article we explain the purpose of customer journey mapping and the value you can create by applying it in your organization. We also list several reasons, why and when it makes sense to start journey mapping - maybe some of them apply to your situation.

Antonia Cramer

a person's hands leaning on a table with sharpies, color samples, files and coffee

September 30, 2020

Journey mapping in marketing

Journey mapping and marketing go so much hand in hand that one might think it’s self-explanatory. But just like for any other person, also marketers sometimes have a hard time empathizing with customers. Customer journey mapping can help marketers to ensure they act for the customers’ sake and that it’s really the customer who’s in the focus of what they’re doing – rather than tools and processes.

Katharina Rainer

A sequence of steps of creating journey maps

September 29, 2020

Learning cards: creating and analyzing journey maps

Are you new to journey mapping or do you want to introduce the approach to a new group? These learning cards will come in handy!

Isabel Grillmayr

little girl and woman holding hands and walking away

September 22, 2020

Journey mapping in NGOs: volunteer management

NGOs have experience management in their DNA: the primary goal of both NGOs and experience designers is to make the world a better place. Journey mapping as a tool can support them in reaching this goal in a more structured way.

Katharina Rainer

two people sitting on a bench, the sun is setting

September 10, 2020

Contextual interviews: understanding employees in their work context

This case study shows how contextual interviews together with other research methods helped to understand people’s work environment, experiences, and pain points of delivery folks of gas cylinders. The study highlights the value of the triangulation of research methods.

Pranjali Pachpute

September 6, 2020

Make a content wish!

At Smaply we are attempting to make your life easier, with the service design products we create, as well as the content we produce that helps make these products more helpful.

Cambrian Berry

August 19, 2020

Learning cards: experience research

Every project, whether it focuses on the customer experience or employee experience, requires a bit of research or data to make informed decisions. These learning cards on experience research help you to dig into the topic.

Isabel Grillmayr

July 30, 2020

Free toolkit: journey mapping

Dig into the methods and practice of journey mapping and improving experiences with cheat sheets, case studies and other learning resources.

Katharina Rainer

July 15, 2020

Templates for customer journey maps, personas and stakeholder maps

Journey mapping workshops often start with drawing on persona templates, customer journey map templates and stakeholder map templates. In this article we provide you with a few simple templates and a short explanation on how to use them.

Isabel Grillmayr

July 10, 2020

Ask Marc – about journey map repositories

In this session we talked about hierarchies of journey maps, how they can complement each other, also between different departments and the challenges of implementing such a method in organizations.

Marc Stickdorn

July 8, 2020

White paper: embedding service design in organizations

This white paper outlines how to embed service design in organizations. It summarizes some reasons for the growing interest in the topic, leadership expectations and the challenges of embedding service design. Subsequently it provides 10 tips to successfully embed service design.

Marc Stickdorn

July 2, 2020

Free toolkit: experience research

Dig into the methods and practice of researching and improving experiences with cheat sheets, case studies and other learning resources.

Katharina Rainer

June 10, 2020

A map is a map: how understanding geographical maps helps us create better journey maps

Maps have been a key tool for people since the dawn of humankind. Starting with fading sketches drawn in sand to Google Maps, maps have always provided information, context, and orientation. What helps us find our way through this world, also helps us to understand our customers and our business.

Michael Steingress

May 13, 2020

Employee experience: shaping new work practices

Managing employee experience helps us find a way out of the endless loop of trying to catch up with the latest HR trends and helps come up with our own solutions. This article introduces to the concept of employee experience, how to bring it into action, and what we – as humans and organizations – can get out of it.

Melina Savvidis

cloud with lightning and heart on a grey background

May 5, 2020

Ask Marc – about experience research

In this session we give an introduction on how to do experience research. We talk about the differences of qualitative and quantitative research and why both of them are interdependent and crucial for an organization. And of course we answer all user questions, such as when to use which UX research methods, examples of ethnographic research and how to calculate the cost of research methods.

Marc Stickdorn

apartment building with balconies, where people sit

April 15, 2020

Remote experience research

Experience research is more important than before, as we need to deeply understand new contexts and act accordingly. As a researcher, we have the opportunity to learn more about behaviors and change products and services responding to crises. We have the knowledge and power to act responsibly and care about customer and employee experience.

Zsofia Szatmari-Margitai

April 7, 2020

Increasing perceived safety and trust in a supermarket with journey mapping

Journey maps can help take the customer by the hand and together walk through times of perceived high risk.

Paul Cook

two people hiking up a mountain in snowy conditions

April 1, 2020

Customer experience in times of crises

Why it’s so important to focus on your customers’ needs and expectations – especially in times like these.

Michael Steingress

March 30, 2020

The why and how of a journey map repository

A journey map repository allows you to organize all your journey maps and make it clear and accessible for yourself and your team. This is a crucial step towards using journey maps as a visual management tool and organizing all projects that impact experiences throughout the organization.

Katharina Rainer

images showing the experience at an airport

March 20, 2020

Ask Marc – about personas on journey maps

In this session we talked about how to use multiple personas on one journey map to compare their experience. Also we included stakeholder groups into the discussion and learn how backstage activities and service blueprints are connected to personas.

Marc Stickdorn

March 10, 2020

Case study: researching experiences in a restaurant

How is the customer experience in a newly opened restaurant? This article shows how our guest author Anna slipped into the guests' shoes and helped the restaurant managers to improve the service.

Anna Katharina Reisenberger

Person writing on a persona template, creating a persona

February 18, 2020

The basics of user personas

In this article we explain what user or customer personas are, why they are important and what you need to consider when creating them. We also provide you with a persona template so that you can get started right away.

Antonia Cramer

February 14, 2020

Ask Marc – about personas

In this session we talk about how personas differ from market segments and other constructs, how to create and update them, and how to successfully embed them in organizations.

Marc Stickdorn

visualization of multiple personas on one journey map

February 12, 2020

How to convince your boss of a journey mapping tool

You want to bring more customer centricity to your organization and need to pitch that journey mapping tool to your boss – your team, other stakeholders? Here comes a slide deck you can use to show others why and how software can help you to successfully improve your customers’ experience.

Isabel Grillmayr

February 11, 2020

The basics of customer experience research

Improving customer experience needs a deep understanding of the entire customer journey and makes structured research the key to success. Customer experience is influenced by multiple online and offline channels, and often happens along a long time frame. These facts make it necessary to carefully evaluate what methods and tools are useful for each specific research and innovation goal.

Antonia Cramer

Marc Stickdorn smiling into the camera, visualization of people

December 20, 2019

Ask Marc – about journey map operations

In this session we talk about journey map operations, a customer-centric management tool for agile organizations and answer user questions on how to embrace this approach in an organization.

Marc Stickdorn

person drawing on stakeholder map template hanging from a wall

December 15, 2019

The basics of stakeholder mapping

A stakeholder map visualizes the ecosystem in which a product or service operates from a specific perspective. This article explains what a stakeholder is, why stakeholder mapping is important and how to create an insightful stakeholder map.

Antonia Cramer

Marc Stickdorn and Nicole Broeckling smiling into the camera

November 7, 2019

Ask Marc – about insights from the Service Design Global Conference 2019

This episode is about the Service Design Global Conference 2019, news from the service design field and learnings and insights from recent developments.

Marc Stickdorn

October 11, 2019

Podcast: SDGC19 Special

Gerry Scullion asks our CEO and co-founder Marc Stickdorn about ‘Customer Journey Map Ops‘. This is also a nice recap of Marc’s masterclass that was hosted as a SDGC side event by EY.

Katharina Rainer

October 1, 2019

Case study: student journey mapping

This case study reviews the use of journey mapping for improving retention rates at a US university. As the work was completed by students graduating into the healthcare field, it also showed how service design methods can help people working in healthcare to apply creative problem solving and a more user-centric approach in their daily work.

Birgit Bosio

Man waving into the camera with a microphone in the foreground.

August 20, 2019

Ask Marc – about employee experience

In this session we talk about employee experience: how to research employee experience, how to build trust and how to start with employee journey management.

Marc Stickdorn

journey map from Smaply visualizing the experience at an airport

August 1, 2019

Demo project: airport experience

How does a journey map made with Smaply look like? How does the customization of persona templates work? How can stakeholder maps be changed and optimized? Smaply’s demo project takes you by the hand by providing you a best practice example.

Katharina Rainer

symbols showing activities on an event on a turquoise background

July 17, 2019

How MPI (re)designed their flagship event

This article shows how mobile ethnography has been used to help redesign the World Education Congress #WEC18.

Ruud Janssen

a map with colorful dots visualizing touchpoints of visitors

July 10, 2019

Case Study: experience research in Central Park

In this article the author discusses her insights on using mobile ethnography for a diary study as a design researcher. The project revolves around understanding how people navigate around Central Park. However, for this article she is be focusing on how she used this tool for a diary study as opposed to the complete project that includes exploratory, generative and evaluative research.

Arushi Jaiswal

4 people standing in front of a brick wall, smiling into the camera.

May 29, 2019

Best practice report: how service design methods helped HR managers focus on their employees’ needs

The Federal Association of Personnel Managers together with hkp/// group launched an initiative to introduce design thinking into HR departments throughout Germany, independent of the company size or industry. Participants learned how to apply service design methods to HR to boost their employee experience and increase employee loyalty towards the company.

Katharina Rainer

visualization of personas standing in front of a white background

April 5, 2019

14 aspects to consider when opting for a journey mapping tool

So you’re planning to really dive into journey mapping, together with your team. So many tools out there, so many different possibilities and features – but which ones do you really need for your purpose, for the team you’re working with, for your product? We’ve prepared a checklist that helps you choose the most suitable customer (or user, employee, citizen, …) journey mapping tool for your project.

Katharina Rainer

Marc Stickdorn smiling into the camera, a laptop and a microphone

March 6, 2019

Podcast: Tools and ways on how to implement service design in large organizations

In this podcast, our co-founder and CEO Marc Stickdorn shares his experience on how to successfully bring service design to large organizations.

Marc Stickdorn

March 2, 2019

Talking about customer experience, service design, and tools…

Here come some of our team’s talks about customer experience and service design.

Katharina Rainer

Mother with a newborn baby, holding it tight.

March 1, 2019

Case study: journey mapping in healthcare

This case shows how the Community Empowerment Lab, a global health research and innovation organization, used Smaply to help design a model for scaling Kangaroo Mother Care in rural India.

Katharina Rainer

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