My most chaotic product development experience occurred during my senior year. I was a lead designer and front-end developer for the project, although my other teammates also worked on the front end with me.
The issue with our development process was that we all thought we knew what we were building. We all thought we were on the same page about what needed to happen. We spent hours in meetings with each other coming up with a plan. But this original plan didn’t help us reach our final product.
Although we didn’t end use story mapping in our process, I believe that it would have enhanced our experience by first creating a shared understanding. We all had different visions for the app, not only in terms of the UI/design but what features were pivotal to the experience of the user. As a result, when we divided tasks, the components of the app simply didn’t flow together and didn’t make it easy for our target audience (or ourselves to use). We had a document that listed what we wanted. But we didn’t have a true, shared understanding from this document.
I also think story mapping would’ve helped me with this particular experience by helping me document all of my thoughts so I wouldn’t forget them. Because of the fast-paced class, I didn’t have a chance to share all my thoughts. Furthermore, my goldfish memory put them out of my mind as soon as we moved on to the next topic. As a result, there were a lot of features that could have been different or prioritized had I simply remembered them. With story mapping, the idea of writing things on notecards, not only for reference but for rearrangement in a visual space, would have helped me organize my own understanding and communicate it effectively to my teammates. And I know I’m not the most effective communicator, so this would really be revolutionary for me personally.
One way that this differs from the design processes I’ve used myself is the fact that spatial arrangements have meaning. i’ve never thought about stacking cards or sticky notes to show a hierarchy of priorities. Rather, I tend to stack things that go together and are related. This implicit behavior communicated values across the entire team. Meanwhile, I would’ve just written down our priorities in a separate doc. When writing them down in a doc, it makes everything seem like a priority (since we see everything there). However, as soon as a card disappears, it seems less important. I think my projects would improve if I was able to see what truly wasn’t important.
