User Needs in Wardley MappingFinding the Needs That Anchor Your Map
Every Wardley Map is anchored on user needs: you start with who your users are and what they need, then map the components that meet those needs. Here is how to identify your users, find their real needs, and allow for the bias that changes as components evolve.
Why User Needs Anchor the Map
At the top of a Wardley Map sit your users and their needs. Below them is the value chain: the components that meet those needs, placed by how visible they are to the user and how evolved they are. Get the needs wrong and every component below them ends up in the wrong place, or shouldn't be on the map at all. That is why Wardley's doctrine puts "Know your users" and "Focus on user needs" in Phase I.
Know Your Users
Start by being clear who your users are. Customers are the obvious ones, but they are rarely the only ones. Focus on what each group needs, rather than on what your business wants from them.
Customers
The people or organisations who use, and usually pay for, what you provide.
Shareholders
They need a return on their investment and confidence in how the organisation is run.
Regulators
They need you to follow the rules that protect others, and to show that you do.
Staff
They need the tools, information, and conditions to do their work well.
Finding Real Needs
Users rarely state their needs directly, so use more than one source.
Look at Transactions
Study what actually passes between you and your users: what they ask for, buy, complain about, and use. Transactions show the value you provide today.
Walk the User Journey
Follow the steps a user takes to get what they need. Look for pain points, unnecessary steps, and needs that nobody is meeting.
Talk to Users and Experts
Ask, but treat the answers with care. People describe needs in terms of solutions they already know, and experts bring their own biases.
Learn the Market
When your users are other organisations, study their market as well. They may not have a clear view of their own needs.
How Bias Changes as Components Evolve
What users tell you depends on where the component sits on the evolution axis, so expect a different kind of bias in each domain.
Uncharted
Nobody, users or experts, knows quite what is needed yet. Experiment, test ideas cheaply, and be ready to change direction as you learn.
Transitional
Users tend to judge the new by the old and ask for a better version of what they already have: the "faster horse" rather than the car. The line is often credited to Henry Ford, though there is no evidence he said it. Listen, but help users see where the component is heading.
Industrialised
Needs are well understood, but past success creates attachment to legacy solutions. Provide a good-enough service at volume, and expect resistance when you change how it is delivered.
Common Mistakes
Starting with Your Solution
"Users need our app" is not a user need. Ask what the app does for them, and keep asking until you reach something the user would recognise as their own need.
Confusing Your Needs with Theirs
"We need more revenue" is your need, not your users'. Map the users whose needs, once met, produce that revenue.
Forgetting Some Users
Regulators and staff rarely appear in customer research, but their needs can shape what you have to build.
Following the Flow of Capital
On a Wardley Map, flow is the transfer of capital between components. Capital means more than money: it can be financial, physical, social, information, or risk. Tracing these flows shows how value reaches each user and what comes back. A customer pays you; a regulator grants permission to operate in return for compliance; staff give time and skill in return for pay and purpose. Look for bottlenecks, and for flows that serve no user need.
Anticipating New Needs
Needs change as the components that meet them evolve. When something becomes a commodity, new higher order systems appear on top of it, and with them new needs. Watch how the components on your map are evolving, what competitors are doing, and what users start asking for, and update the map when you see a shift.
Related
Sources
- Adapted from Simon Wardley, Wardley Maps, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Material adapted from these sources is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.