Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Caitria O’Neill Your concept will mean different things to different people.

Why and how to run stakeholder mapping activities with a group of non-researchers/non-designers.

This article outlines a 2-step process for group stakeholder mapping. By moving away from making a list and instead drawing your stakeholder map in a more graphical form, you create a tool that can help structure and stretch your thinking.

Most UX researchers I know have their own, preferred method of identifying the individuals and groups that are likely to affect or be affected by their new product. You don’t have to be a researcher to use Stakeholder Maps to achieve a few helpful feats:

build team empathy for diverse user types or use cases
articulate the value the product provides to specific users
articulate the value specific users provide to the product ecosystem

Basic Stakeholder Map — Nodes and Lines

In its most basic form, a stakeholder map is a physical map. Imagine a big sheet of paper, structured with individuals or groups as ‘nodes’, and the relationship between them as ‘lines’.

Teams often fall into the trap of rattling off a list of general value propositions, but not differentiating which value propositions resonate with various stakeholder types.

“Our market is everyone! Our product is great for everything!”

Often in this case, the product becomes too general to solve problems well, or the feature list swells . If you don’t map all stakeholders, you equally run the risk of having an overly-niche product by pivoting on value experienced by one stakeholder type.

I use visual stakeholder mapping as a forcing function (an activity that prevents the group from moving forward without consciously considering these elements), to encourage group members to consider all angles, and to source creative ideas around product value proposition.

1.Brainstorm Stakeholders

START WITH YOURSELF: Draw your company or product in the center of a large piece of paper or whiteboard.
GO BROAD: Ask group members to come up with as many different ‘types’ of stakeholders as possible. This can be broad categories like ‘government officials’. If the group is having difficulty coming up with diverse stakeholders, you can cut your stakeholder map into subsections and do more focused brainstorms for each area.
ZOOM IN: Push the group to think of a few individuals within each stakeholder category to ground the following steps of this activity. Trying to articulate a product’s value to ‘all of government’ is too broad. Trying to figure out the value we provide to Angela Merkel is a somewhat more concrete prompt.

Create subsections to help dive deeper into stakeholder types

Breaking a stakeholder brainstorm into smaller parts can help focus groups and source more creative ideas.

2. Define the HOOK and the ASK

One of the best parts of a visual stakeholder map is the secondary activity of defining the relationship between stakeholder and product <- -> in both directions.

When designing a product, you make decisions about which stakeholders to prioritize. Generally a team prioritizes stakeholders that get the most out of the product, but ideally they would also take into account who provides the most value to the ecosystem through participation.

To get at the heart of this value proposition question, I ask groups to draw lines between their product and a few stakeholders. In one direction, we define ‘the Hook’, or our intended value to the stakeholder. In the other direction, we define ‘the Ask’, or this stakeholder’s value to our product ecosystem.

THE HOOK: what value does this product generate for this particular user? What are the top value propositions that would engage them?
THE ASK: what value does this stakeholder’s participation have to our company? What types of engagement or action are needed to provide that value?

You need to provide value to your stakeholder — and receive value in return!

Your product might GET and GIVE very different types of value.

3. Debrief

You can prepare for next steps by having the group rank stakeholders by perceived value. Ending your session with a top group of ‘stakeholders of interest’ will make it easier to check in on assumptions with surveying and other methods.

I favor 2 quick group sorts, each addressing a different angle.

Rank by ‘most value to the company (or team’s goals)’
Rank by ‘ most value to the individual stakeholder’ Since this activity is part-brainstorm, I try to reiterate important part of the design process, but that all of our work should be considered assumptions until we can verify with research. Stakeholders at the top of each category get added to my list of research follow-ups to gut-check direction, and create more detailed personas.

GO FURTHER

Here are a few additional stakeholder mapping activities and resources.

BSR (Business for Social Responsibility) — Stakeholder Mapping Activities.
Mind Tools, Stakeholder Analysis

What activities or variations do you use to explore value to stakeholders? Share your method in the comments below!

Stakeholder Maps (for Non-Designers) was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Stakeholder Maps (for Non-Designers)

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