The Flywheel / Research / 03 Journeys

03Research · step 3 of 4

Journeys

Invent the ideal journeys those people would love, moment by moment, unconstrained.

The Map: cover

The tool for this step

The Map

Invent the journeys they'd love. Imagine ideal journeys for each hero, moment by moment, and the value each moment gives them.

How to use The Map →
Download the MapPDF · 3 pages: cover, board, how to use it

What it is

Now, for the first time, you invent, and our side begins: the directions we are interested in. Take a hero and imagine the ideal journeys they would love, as a path of moments: first they go here, then there.

Each moment is a real situation in their life: where they are, what happens, what they feel, and the value they get. No feasibility yet: “can we build this?” and “what would it cost?” wait until Development. Nobody wants your product; they want what happens to them.

How to run it

Step 1Start from the heroTheir from → to, their pain, and their words, from the Storyboard. If they have a path today, sketch it as you understand it.
Step 2Invent the momentsMoment by moment: where they are, what happens, what they feel, what value they get. End where they wanted to go.
Step 3Be boldWrite plenty of journeys, and plenty of bold ones, as long as each makes sense in the hero's story.
Step 4Write what must be trueThe assumptions each journey rides on, each with a confidence, so the Simulator can test them. Then weed out and refine as time passes.

What you produce

The Map: invent the journeys they'd love. Imagine ideal journeys for each hero, moment by moment, and the value each moment gives them.

Examples

A

The letter in the mailbox

She walks to the mailbox in her pyjamas: a thick, hand-addressed envelope, unlike anything in the pile. She reads it standing in the kitchen. Her day starts differently now. Value: a moment that is hers, every month.

B

The bold one

Letters written as smuggled correspondence from 1950s Romania: aged paper, one corner burned. Feasible? Worth $10–15 a month? Nobody knows yet. That is what the Simulator is for.

Where it goes wrong

  • Feasibility leaking in“We could do that on the existing platform”, and ten minutes later the journeys are a feature list. Keep cost and building out.
  • Products disguised as journeysIf you can build it straight from the sentence, it is a feature, not a journey.
  • Only safe journeysA set of safe journeys produces no new value. Keep the bold ones until the Simulator rules them out.
  • Moments with no valueIf nothing of value happens in a moment, there is nothing to test.

What it hands on

The Simulator watches the Map, and tests each journey before anything is built.