Jim Kalbach is currently the Head of Customer Success at MURAL. He has previously worked in various design-related consulting roles for large companies, such as eBay, Audi, SONY, Elsevier Science, LexisNexis, and Citrix. Before moving back to the US in 2013 after living for fifteen years in Germany, he was the co-founder of the European Information Architecture conferences and he also founded the IA Konferenz, a leading UX design event in Germany. In 2007, he published his first full-length book, Designing Web Navigation and his second book, Mapping Experiences, was a #1 bestseller on Amazon in the Business Development section.
Jim has a varied professional background. He studied information science and has a lot of experience doing digital product design for agencies and large companies.
“Really these visualizations are a way for us customer experience professionals to observe the world, so that we can bring that back into our organizations”.
He says that professionals don’t necessarily create the customer experience, as it’s something the customer owns.
“We have to understand that and help them navigate because it is actually their journey through our eco system and our touch points.”
Jim says it is important to have participations from companies that he works with, open conversations and getting in the problem-solving mindset.
“People support what they create or help create.”
Jim says having the visualization helps because it inspires people to want to have a conversation, but the danger lies in people focusing on the diagram itself instead of using it as a tool for improvement.
“You put it up on the wall and people lean back; you want it to be a lean-in deliverable.”
He believes you need to think about how you are going to use the map because ultimately it is not about the deliverable or the document but how that activates change.
INTERVIEW LINKS:
www.ExperiencingInformation.com
“The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman
“The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen
"The Innovator's Solution" by Clayton Christensen