ep. 47. The Stakeholder Ecosystem Mapping Workshop: A How-To Guide
8 min read
Last week, I shared the story of Operation Cat Drop. In the 1950s, the World Health Organization used DDT in Borneo to combat malaria-carrying mosquitoes. While the DDT did kill off the mosquitoes, it also entered the food web. Cats died, rats proliferated, and disease spread. To restore balance, the Royal Air Force parachuted cats into the region to hunt the rats.
This story highlights the unintended consequences of solving problems without considering systemic interactions. It also underscores the power of reframing a problem through a systems thinking lens. The initial problem framing was: How might we reduce malaria-carrying mosquitoes? In hindsight, we see the value of reframing the problem as: How might we control malaria while safeguarding the ecosystem's health? This reframe offers a better chance of identifying opportunities and risks early, and yielding holistic solutions that are more scalable and stainable. We saw this play out in a real-world AI example last week: leading HCI practitioner and professor Jodi Forlizzi and her team applied a systems lens to re-design AI tools for the hospitality industry in Las Vegas, improving worker autonomy and job satisfaction, while mitigating negative effects of automation.
While our last episode focused on the theory behind systems thinking in genAI design, today’s episode focuses on practice. I introduce the Stakeholder Ecosystem Mapping Workshop from my Problem-Solution Symbiosis Framework, to help your product team reframe from problem-solving for an end user, to considering the broader ecosystem in which your product will exist. I’ll walk you through how you can run this workshop, including a template to help you design more valuable, sustainable, and scalable genAI solutions.
The Stakeholder Ecosystem Mapping Workshop
Overview
What’s the goal of this workshop? Reframe your problem space as a system to proactively address risks and uncover hidden opportunities for genAI product design - insights that are often missed when focusing solely on the end user.
Who is this workshop for? Product teams looking to broaden their perspective from the end user, to considering the entire ecosystem in which their product will exist.
Why should I use this? This workshop will help you anticipate risks, uncover new opportunities, and design a more holistic product that is set up for long-term success.
When should I use this? While you can run this workshop anytime, it's most effective early in product development, during customer discovery and initial problem definition.
Where did this workshop come from? It’s a tool from my Problem-Solution Symbiosis Framework for building human-centered AI solutions. You can read more about the Framework in this previous episode.
Get started with this Workshop Template.
Logistics
How long is the workshop? 1 hour
Who leads this activity? 1-2 team team members. At least one member should have deep expertise in your market (e.g. design researcher, product manager, product designer).
Who should participate? Cross-functional stakeholders. Include at least one person building technical capabilities, such as a machine learning (ML) engineer. They can help keep discussions connected to technical feasibility (especially important for building genAI solutions).
What are the deliverables? Map of your stakeholder ecosystem, prioritized product risks and opportunities.
What happens after the workshop? You adapt your product strategy to address the risks and opportunities you identified, using your Ecosystem Map as a reference.
Before the Workshop
Prep the Template
Vision, Strategy, Tactics
Before your workshop, you’ll need to ground the session in the company’s vision, strategy and tactics.
Vision: Clear, aspirational statement that defines the long-term desired change resulting from an organization's work, guiding its overall direction.
Strategy: The choices your organization will make to achieve its vision.
Tactics: Specific actions taken to execute on strategy.
Let’s use an example of an educational technology (EdTech) company:
Vision: Empowering educators to inspire every learner.
Strategy: Develop and provide an AI-enabled grading system designed to address instructors' needs for efficient and consistent grading in higher education.
Tactics: Partner with three leading universities to integrate with their learning management system (LMS).
Next, fill this information in on the Recap section of the workshop template (make a copy to get started). Take note of your anticipated end user - in this case - university instructors. This will be an important starting point later in the workshop.
Identify and invite cross-functional stakeholders to the workshop. If you don’t have a co-facilitator, identify at least one person with whom you can partner, to help provide feedback and follow up on workshop outcomes.
During the Workshop
As the facilitator, cover the Context section of the workshop (10 min), including your Recap. You’ll then go through the following activities with your team:
Identify Stakeholders (10 min)
Stakeholder Download: Imagine you’ve implemented your strategy and tactics. Consider all of the people, groups, or systems that impact or are impacted by your end user’s experience using the solution you build for them. These can be direct or indirect relationships. Don’t forget to include your own team! Some thought starters:
Who interacts with your end users on a regular basis?
Who provides support or resources for each stakeholder?
What are downstream effects of any processes your solution automates?
Cluster: Cluster similar stickies together.
Label: Label each cluster.
At the end of this step, you might have something that looks like this (see the hi-res version under “Example” here):
Stakeholder Ecosystem Mapping (20 min)
Add each stakeholder to the board, 1/circle. Add more circles as needed.
Move and overlap circles as needed to show connections or dependencies between stakeholders. Indicate your end user in bold.
Imagine you develop a solution for your use case. Is that a large, medium or small impact on each stakeholder? Resize your current circles accordingly so you have three discreet sizes.
You will now have something that looks like this:
The conversation that led to this map might have started by how the instructor’s use of AI-enabled grading might impact students - for instance, quality of the learning experience and trust in the instructor and institution. Students’ experiences around quality and trust have downstream effects on academic administrators and friends or family (support network). There is also the consideration of how students are using genAI tools in their own work. Consider this recent CNN article on teachers’ use of AI for grading essays, and parents’ concerns about bankrolling a feedback loop AI-grading of AI-graded content.
Furthermore, automating part of the instructor workflow may impact workload and potentially job security, bringing instructors’ unions on the map. Integration into existing LMS also requires interfacing both with these providers and IT staff.
Regulations on bias, AI use and curriculum standards may impact development and adoption. All of these outcomes affect the company developing these tools.
Identify Risks and Opportunities (20 min)
Identify Risks: What potential risks or challenges might arise with the implementation of our AI-enabled grading solution? Add these risks (1/sticky) where you see them occurring on the Map.
Uncover Opportunities: What potential opportunities or benefits could arise with the implementation of your solution (in this case, the AI-enabled grading solution)?
Review & Vote: Each person gets two votes: One for highest priority risk, and one for highest priority opportunity.
Next Steps: Identify next steps to follow up on risks and opportunities, and Directly Responsible Individuals (DRIs).
After the Workshop
Work with your partner to follow up with DRIs on addressing risks and pursuing opportunities. Keep your Stakeholder Ecosystem Map next to where you keep your Persona to remind you of this systems-thinking reframe of problem space.
Putting It All Together
Embracing systems thinking through the Stakeholder Ecosystem Mapping Workshop helps product teams reframe their thinking to consider the broader ecosystem in which their solution fits. This is in contrast to how we often think about designing new solutions: problem-solving for an end user.
This workshop can help teams visualize stakeholder interdependencies, anticipate risks and uncover hidden opportunities. These insights can help foster the development of more holistic solutions that are sustainable and scalable.
📣 Call to Action: Interested in running this workshop with your team? Let’s chat about how we can partner on a case study! Reach out at stef@sendfull.com
Stakeholder Ecosystem Mapping Workshop © 2024 by Stefanie Hutka, Head of Design Research, Sendfull LLC is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
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That’s a wrap 🌯 . More human-computer interaction news from Sendfull next week.