Fair warning this is not a project so much as a snapshot of a design activity I love.

If there is a design activity that I just love to do, that helps my process, understanding and adds incremental value to every project I do its concept mapping. It’s quick to complete and promotes quick understanding across an interdisciplinary group without a lot of back and forth. Concept mapping tells a story in an easy to understand visual way that shows how things are connected, surfaces opportunities and really just gives both the person who creates it and the person who consumes it an opportunity to think deeply about a problem or opportunity space.

Why I love concept mapping

Concept map I created depicting the current state and future of cart at shutterstock.

A quick story about concept mapping and the power of mentorship

I lead a small team of product designers in our e-commerce business, we work on things like conversion, pricing and packaging, and cart and checkout. I spend a decent amount of my time helping to grow my team’s skill sets. Recently I explained the benefits of a concept map and the basics of how they function to Anny on my team. It was a fairly high level conversation with some links to resources and showing examples I had created in the past. Anny proceeded with her first concept map around mid-cycle promotions. Mid-cycle promotions are sales and incentives to keep our current customers engaged and loyal to our brand. Below you can see her concept map.

What makes me so excited about this concept map is how she took the direction / advice I gave and blew it out of the water. You can see above that she added screenshots to really help the consumer of this map understand the story. She did so well with this activity that I had her present it in our product org bi-weekly meeting. It was so well received and gained so much interest and respect from our product colleagues I hope to continue to share these type of work with them in these meetings.

How can we make concept mapping even more powerful?

Taking a cue from Anny and her concept map addition, I’ve been thinking… What if we added quantitative data to the map. Or even qualitative quotes from users. To make the story more powerful to increase the understanding of the level of opportunity or in some cases show that there really isn’t an opportunity in this space. This Is why I love concept maps. They can be that flexible thing that brings common understanding.