Biblio-motional Experience Mapping

The Use of Visualization to Understand the Library Studying  Experience

Challenge

I’ve studied in class, on busses, in coffee shops, in bed. I’ve studied at the gym on the  treadmill. I’ve even studied at a bar during happy. I’ve studied in a lot of place, but I can  never get myself to study at the university library. When friends and colleagues ask why I  never study at the library, I couldn't really articulate a persuasive answer. All I’d say is that I  didn’t like to go there much. Truth is, I didn’t know why.    After taking this Design Thinking course, I decided to further investigate this personal  challenge. I felt I was missing out on a seminal graduate school experience and wanted to  better understand why. To do so, I decided to use two approaches:  the visualization design  thinking tool and creating emotional maps of the experience.

Selection

The process of visualization “allows us to think in a nonverbal way” (Lesson 1, ​Visualization  Tool​ video). It helps us communicate complex ideas by activating the, “[right side] of our  brain, parts of our creativity, that we might not normally be using in the course of  conversation” (Lesson 1, ​Visualization Tool​ video). I decided to recall a time I went to the  library to study and to visualize on post-it notes the different parts of the experience. I  wanted to create a storyboard of the experience.    I also decided to create an emotional map of my experience of going to the library. An  emotional map is a representational tool that would allow me to recognize the different  emotions at different parts of an experience. I wanted to immerse myself in the experience  and surface the pain points that were inhibiting me from normally going to the library to  study.

Application & Insights

So, on a Saturday morning I decided to tackle this challenge. I first started by recalling a time  I went to the university library; and on post-it notes, I drew a representation of each of the  steps: getting dressed, hoping on the bus, getting to the library, finding a spot to study,  studying, getting back on the bus, and heading home. While this process helped me  consider the experience in it’s entirety (what happens before I get to the library and what  happens afterwards), I felt that major parts of the experience were missing. Afterall, the

visualization and storyboarding exercise did not help me identify the parts of the experience  that were inhibiting me from going to the library to study.     For that reason, I decided to go to the library and track my entire experience. I grabbed a  pen and journal and began noting down everything I was doing as I was preparing to go to  the library. I was noted down the nature of the experience: from very unfavorable to very  favorable. I made sure to capture how I felt about each part of the experience. I wanted to be  as exhaustive as possible. Some of the steps I wrote down included: deciding what to wear,  deciding what to pack, figuring out the bus schedule, finding a quiet place in the library,  moving to find a place with a electric plug, getting hungry, etc… On the bus ride back home,  I flipped through my journal. I must have had 50+ annotated entries!    As soon I got back home, I started working on my emotional experience map. I divided the  experience into 5 stages:

1. Anticipating (i.e., getting ready to go to the library)  2. Entering (i.e., getting to the library)  3. Engaging (i.e., studying)  4. Exiting (i.e., leaving to go back home)  5. Reflecting (i.e., looking back at the experience)

For each of the stages, I mapped the different parts of the experience and how I felt at those  moments. I ended up with a chart: the y-axis represented the intensity of the emotion and  the x-axis represented the flow of the experience from anticipating to reflecting. Annotated  points on the chart represented different aspects of the experience. This emotional  experience mapping exercise helped me identify the culprit: At the library, I could not engage  in productive procrastination. When I got bored studying at the library, I did not have any  welcomed and productive distractions. As I thought about other places I studied, there was  always something meaningful and fulfilling I could do as a quick study break. At the library I  felt stuck.     While I felt I effective in using the experience mapping tool to identify the problem, I resorted  to creating an annotated chart of my experience. I think that storyboarding my entire  experience would have added another layer of welcomed complexity. For instance, I feel I  would have represented extreme pain points of my experience in a really emotionally  exaggerated hand-drawn cartoon-y figure. Who knows? Maybe I would have uncovered  additional culprits.

All in all, this experience mapping activity helped me identify the problem and provided me  with insight to help me design and test a solution: Next time I go to the library to study, I  could try bringing a fun book to read as a productive distraction.     Both the storyboarding and experience mapping exercises helped me understand that my  experiences are composed of many micro-interactions with the context. This became

evident when I compared my original, retrospective recollection of the library experience with  the final emotional map. While this course proved how powerful Design Thinking can be for  solving real-world, wicked problems, using these tools on myself helped me see the value of  the Design Thinking approach in helping me better understand my behaviors and tackling  some of my own challenges.

Approach

Overall, I felt this exercise was successful. However (if this course taught me anything)  there’s always room for improvement. One thing I realized when I was studying at the library,  is that I was forgetting at times to journal what was happening. At some points I became so  immerses in the experience that I forgot to track it! While I’m sure that this state of flow has  its positives, I can see that sometimes it could be detrimental to the experience mapping  process (i.e., forgetting to capture key parts of the experience). One thing I could do to  improve this process is to prompt myself to do a self-check every 2 minutes. For instance, I  could set my phone to go off every 2 minutes.     Another improvement to this process would be to map my most favorable studying  experience and compare that to the library experience. I often favor to study at a coffee  shop. Maybe comparing the coffee shop studying experience to that of the library would help  me uncover additional insights.

