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Writer's pictureAmber Reynolds

Problem-Solving With Human-Centered Process Flow Mapping


Listen to the audio version. 👆

 

Part of running a business, especially by yourself, is that you’re constantly problem-solving.

Sometimes it’s easy stuff like your internet is down and you can’t check email (oh, no…anyway.)


Other times, it’s more complicated. It could be complicated because something has a lot of steps and you or your customers are confused. And then other, other times, it’s complicated because humans are involved.


Whatever the problem is, you can use human-centered process flow mapping to find the solution.


WHY IT MATTERS

Human-Centered process flow mapping will help you better identify the actual problem so you can spend your time and resources on developing a solution faster.


WHAT’S NEXT:

  • Process Flow Mapping For Humans

  • Create a Human-Centered Process Flow Map

  • Adding The Human Element

  • Fixing The Kink

  • Testing Your Solutions

  • Example Human-Centered Process Flow Map


Process Flow Mapping For Humans

Process flow mapping is visually creating the steps of a process to help you figure out where the kinks are. You’re basically trying to answer, “What’s the holdup here?”


When it comes to designing customer experiences or your own work experience, I like to add another element to the map: the human element.


When you’re creating a process for machines or tech, it’s simple. Tell it what to do and in what order, and it’ll do what it’s told.


Humans, on the other hand, are complicated.


When you identify a kink in the process, you have to determine how to smooth it out. With machines or tech, that might mean fixing code or changing the order of the process.


For humans, we have to think a lot deeper.


  • What are they feeling?

  • What are they thinking?

  • Where is the behavior or lack of behavior stemming from?


The answers to those questions will impact how you approach solving the kink in the process.


When to use Human-Centered Process Flow Mapping

And the answer is: Anytime a human is involved in the process.


Some customer examples might be:

  • Customers taking forever to pay you

  • Customers not completing paperwork

  • Customers not prepared come the day of the service


The neat thing is you can use it to solve your own problems, too.

  • Avoiding your inbox like the plague

  • Getting leads to book sales calls (and show up)

  • Stalling on building out a new service offering



🎶If there's a problem, yo, go map it

Check out the steps while you diagnose and solve it

Map, map baby

Process map, map baby

Process map, map baby P

rocess map, map baby

Mapping 🎶


Please enjoy this music video from my friend, Ashley Rogers, who is a creative genius and a true friend for volunteering to do this.



Tools For Process Flow Mapping

The good news is you really don’t need much.


On the low techy-techy* end, grab your kid’s sidewalk chalk and start mapping.


If your back and knees couldn’t handle that, here are a few other options:

  • Pencil and paper

  • Whiteboard

  • Post-it notes on your wall or table

  • Virtual whiteboard software like Canva or Miro


Which tool you use depends entirely on how your brain works best.


Personally, I either use Post-It notes on my wall or Canva.


I find Post-It notes on my wall are better for big-picture thinking and brain-dumping. Canva I prefer to use for getting into the details and solidifying the plan.


Choose whatever comes naturally to you. If you get frustrated with tech or tend to hyperfocus on learning new software, ignore the siren call of pretty new software to play with. Use what you have and know already.


*Bonus points if you know where this comes from.


A man walking into his office covered floor to ceiling in post it notes.
Don't go this crazy.

Create a Human-Centered Process Flow Map

First, you’ll want to identify the big-picture problem you want to fix.


Second, identify the process, or processes, that you believe most strongly contribute to that problem.


Keep in mind that it is possible that the problem is occurring somewhere you didn’t expect, but it’s best to start with the most obvious things to tackle first.


Third, choose your process flow mapping tool and start mapping the entire process that you’re investigating.


Visual Mapping Basics

Remember that a process flow map is meant to be visual. How you choose to visually represent different steps is up to you and depends on the tool you’re using.


Here’s a quick visual mapping symbol guide for reference.


A graphic that says "Basic Visual Mapping Symbols" and shows various symbols and how they're used in mapping.
But you can use anything you want.


Creating Your First Draft

When you create your first draft process flow map, you’re going to miss steps.


Because this is your process, there’s a lot that will seem obvious to you or not like a step at all.


What I would suggest is to go through the process from two vantage points:

  1. From your perspective

  2. From your client’s perspective


Treat yourself as a client and follow all of the same steps they would to complete the process you’re trying to fix.


As you complete a step, add it to your process flow map.


Identify The Kinks

Once you have your process flow mapped, now you can look to see where customers fall off in the process. There may be one or multiple problem areas.


Highlight, star, or somehow add a visual note of where the breakdown seems to be.


The Three Barriers To Action

At this point, you’ve done the technical part. You’ve mapped the process and identified the problem areas.


Now comes the hard part - adding the human element.


Behavior, or the lack of a preferred behavior, usually boils down to three things for customers: They’re “lazy”, confused, or scared.


A graphic for the Williams Behavior Change Model to illustrate anticipating and overcoming barriers to action.
I'm not a fan of "lazy" so pay more attention to the definition.


By adding the human elements to the process flow map, it’ll help you determine which one (or more) of these you need to address.


Adding The Human Element

You’ll go back through each step of the process and add two key things:

  1. What the customer is feeling at this point in the process

  2. What the customer is likely thinking at this point in the process


How Do I Know?

You may be asking, “Well, how would I know what they’re thinking and feeling?”


Valid question.


Getting to know these things is part asking and part observing.


You can ask customers who have gone through your process or ask people to identify how they think they’d feel at a certain stage in the process.


However, people aren’t great at giving accurate information about past behavior or saying what they would do in a given situation. We always apply more logic and not enough emotion. You’d want to take this information with a pinch of salt.


You can get helpful information if you’re good at digging into responses and asking follow-up questions. The answers you need are always a few layers deep.


Observing and taking notes as customers move through your process is likely a better way to figure out what customers may be feeling and thinking. Actions speak louder than words.


Do your best to make an educated guess based on past interactions. As you continue to work with customers, pay attention to what questions they ask and how they appear to be feeling.


Adding Feelings

In sales, customers buy with emotion and justify with logic.


This is true of every decision we make and every action we take, even if it’s indecision and inaction. As much as we like to pretend otherwise, that’s just the human way.


If you can identify what a customer is feeling at a given step in the process, you’ll have some insight into how to help them take that next step.


With each step of the process, you’ll add a feelings indicator.


What you decide to use is up to you. If feelings are one of those things that are tough for you, The Gladiator method may be best. If you like being all up in the feels, then using emojis is a great way to add nuance and provide more targeted solutions.


A graphic called The Human Element - Feelings. Shows different methods for noting customer feelings like emojis, traffic light system, and The Gladiator Method.

Adding Thoughts

Whether someone has an inner dialogue or not, everyone has thoughts that push and pull them to and from taking a step.


(My internal voice never shuts up, in case you were wondering.)


If you can identify what thoughts a customer may be thinking, it gives you another clue about how to create a solution in the process.


Not every step of the process will have a deep, meaningful thought. It may just be a, “Hmm…I wonder how this works?”


Go step-by-step in the process and add thoughts you think customers are having at each step.

Think back to past experiences, questions you’ve gotten, or just gut instinct.


A graphic called The Human Element - Thoughts. Shows thought bubbles with different worries customers might have.

Fixing The Kink

Now that you have your human-centered process flow map, the fun part happens. You get to create solutions.


Look at the step in the process where there seems to be a problem. Look at what you’re asking a customer to do under the context of the human elements you’ve added.


What seems to be holding them back from taking that step?


Are they “lazy”, confused, or scared? Is it more than one?


Now you can start brainstorming solutions to address what the customer is having difficulty with.


And because you’ve included thoughts in your process map, you can speak directly to that thought in your solution, creating a “Holy shit - how did they know?!” feeling from a customer.


“Lazy” or Confused Problems

Problems under the “lazy” or confused categories tend to be the simplest to solve if you can identify them.


If there’s confusion about what to do, the solution may be to simplify the process, break it up into easier-to-manage chunks, or create a how-to video to help customers through the process.


If it’s a “lazy” issue, then that usually means one (or more) of three things:

  1. I’m not interested (even if I said I was)

  2. I don’t see the value

  3. The effort isn’t worth the reward


Effort Vs Reward Graphic to show that customers will take action on things where the effort is minimal compared to the reward.

If they’re not interested, either they’re not a good fit at all, or it’s just not a good fit right now. You’ll want a follow-up process for these people unless they’re not a good fit at all.


If they don’t see the value, then you’ll want to look at either:

  1. How to better communicate the value in a way that’s meaningful to them.

  2. Make sure you understand what’s valuable to them so you can communicate it well.


Scared Problems

Problems under the “scared” category are where things get interesting.


These are often less obvious and difficult to identify. While these require more effort, the payoff is worth it. Remember, we behave based on emotion; justify it with logic.


Addressing problems in the scared category will mean bringing your empathy and coaching skills to the table. (Yes, even if you’re a plumber, coaching skills are a tool in your tool bag that you should have.)


The solution to most scared problems is a combination of:

  1. Voicing that you know it’s a worry of theirs and showing empathy.

  2. How you can help them avoid the thing they’re scared of.

  3. This could be with tools you’ll provide or how your process helps them avoid/minimize this worry.

  4. If their fear comes true, how you’ll help them through it.


It’s really about helping them process their fear, showing empathy, and illuminating the path forward.


Testing Your Solutions

Once you have an idea or two for tackling a kink in your process, you can test them out.


Chances are, you’ll need to do a bit of tinkering. It’s pretty rare that a solution you create is perfect right from the start. It’s better to test on a small scale before launching it across your business.


Once you test something in a small batch, you can try a larger test to see if the solution still holds. If so, you can roll it out across your business. Continue to monitor and look for feedback and opportunities to improve.


There Are Only Swiss Cheese Solutions

There’s no shortage of reasons why someone isn’t doing something we expect them to do, something they’ve agreed to do, something they want to do, and even something they have paid you to help them do.


You won’t be able to problem-solve for every reason because people are wonderfully weird and complex, but consider each fix like adding a layer of Swiss cheese. Each slice has holes, but when you layer them, not much would get through.


So cover what’s worth covering and then be at peace with the rest.


A graphic called Swiss Cheese Solutions. It shows different slices of Swiss cheese to represent different solutions. Then they're layered to show how their gaps cover each other to prevent less problems from coming through.

Example: New Tutoring College Students Aren’t Filling Out Paperwork

Let’s say you’re a tutor and you’re having a hard time getting students to fill out their new student paperwork.

Here’s a snapshot of what part of that sales and onboarding process might look like.


A human-centered process flow chart example before the problem has been fixed.

Looking at the steps, their timing, and the human elements, we can guess that the student is feeling overwhelmed. The overwhelm could be creating resistance to following through.


They’ve just paid for tutoring, and spending money is often painful (especially when you’re a college student.)


Once they pay, they get hit with three different emails at the same time. Two of the emails require effort from them when they’re already feeling overwhelmed.


This would put them in the confused and scared categories.


What we might do to help them feel less confused or scared:

  • Separate the emails they get so it’s not so overwhelming.

  • After they do a big scary thing like paying, send an email that both reassures them that they’ve made a good decision and tells them what to expect next.

  • Make the new student paperwork easier to complete and focus on only getting the information we absolutely need before the first tutoring session. If information can wait, then we can get it later.

  • Timing the emails they receive to when they’re more likely to be able to engage with them in a good frame of mind.


Here’s what that new human-centered process flow map might look like.


An updated human-centered process flow map example.


This tutor could test this new process out with their next 10 new students to see if it helps students complete their paperwork on time.


They may find it helps some, but it needs more tweaking. But at least now that they have their human-centered process flow map, they can continue to better identify steps that could use improving.


THE BIG TAKEAWAY

If you want to get your customers to do something, you need to fully understand what your process feels like from their perspective. If you approach building your processes with empathy and being human-centered, you’ll be able to create more effective solutions and customers who follow through.

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