Illustrated scenarios

Clearly explaining a new customer experience by words or using schematic representations (eg. journey maps) could be challenging, especially when the scenario you have in mind is very detailed or deals with futuristic features and technologies. Even if the story you wrote down is particularly convincing and easy to understand, there’s the risk your audience would still have a hard time imagining it.

A quick strategy to make future service scenarios more tangible and memorable is to unwrap the customer experience in small pieces, select the most relevant ones and enrich them with clear and easy-to-understand illustrations. The visual technique could change according to specific needs or preferences, from simple sketches to more detailed representations: the important thing is simply to always go straight to the point. For this reason we recommend representing only a few elements, playing with dimensions in order to give visual hierarchy to the representation, and using a well-defined color palette to help guide the audience's attention towards the elements that matter more, without getting lost. Consciously playing with colors and simple graphic elements like labels will help emphasize key components or features and make each illustration self-explanatory.

Combining the textual and visual part is always a good solution especially when your team need to convey their ideas in a powerful way and short timings. lustrated scenarios are a quick and impactful way to engage your audience and guide their attention through the key points of the experience. They can be used during presentations of ideas, but also as part of co-creation sessions or to facilitate conversations with users.

Illustrated scenarios are just one of the available options to make service ideas clear and tangible: with a little more effort and time they could be easily turned into something even more immediate and enjoyable, like video scenarios.