Reading :: Mapping Experiences

Mapping Experiences
By Jim Kalbach

This short review is for the first edition of this O'Reilly book, which a colleague recommended to me. It's focused on how people map value in organizations and markets. Think in terms of Design Thinking's customer journey maps -- which are referenced several times -- as well as business model canvases and strategy maps. If you've been intrigued by Design Thinking or other workshop approaches that help groups of people visualize an experience, this book is definitely worth picking up.

I confess that is not the value I was hoping to take away from the book. Instead, I was thinking more generally about different types of visualizations and how they help us to explore different aspects. And although Kalbach does touch on this question -- he mentions that visualizations fall into four buckets, chronological, hierarchical, spatial, and network -- his main focus is on the specific question of value. As he mentions, these diagrams really aren't the objective. The objective is to engage others in conversations.

Still, it's a well-developed book, nicely illustrated, with a lot of thought put into how these visualizations are presented and used. If you're interested in mapping value in organizations, or even just interested in how visualizations work, definitely pick it up.