Customer Experience (CX) Cookbook

KUALI:
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE COOKBOOK
a collection of ingredients and recipes to design delicious customer experiences
Wednesday, 23 July 14

Kuali: The Customer Experience Cookbook is licensed under a Creative
Common Attributions-Non Commercial 4.0 International License
Kuali:
The Customer Experience Cookbook
a collaboration between
Somia Customer Experience
and
Copenhagen Institute of NeuroCreativity
prepared and cooked in the magical island of Bali
2014

There’s a certain fulﬁllment that we get from food experiences, especially if we put effort in creating the
dishes. A great food experience stimulates one’s senses and also evoke multiple emotions. In many ways,
experience design also aims at the same thing – to create experiences that people love and would love
to share. This customer experience cookbook explores various mindsets, beliefs and approaches that
support the design process. Think of it as a toolkit that guides you through discovering quality ingredients
and preparing palatable dishes, in order to deliver mouth-watering experiences.
There are various aspects making up a perfect dish. It combines the art of selecting quality produce and
impeccable preparations. A good design solution relies on the synergy between process, mindset and
beliefs. The cookbook guides you through the whole design process, and you can choose to use the
recipes that you are comfortable working with, and relevant for the challenge you are working on. Now,
go start whipping some mouth-watering experience!
The customer experience cookbook is made through a collaborative effort between Somia Customer
Experience and Copenhagen Institute of NeuroCreativity (CINC). We blend our expertise in designing
customer experience and nurturing creative conﬁdence in individuals to synthesize the ingredients
making up great design solutions.
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
COOKBOOK

THE EXPERIENCE DESIGN
PROCESS
DISCOVER DEFINE DEVELOP DELIVER
CREATIVITY

DISCOVER
DEFINE
DEVELOP
DELIVER
RESEARCH
& OBSERVE
STRATEGY
IDEATION
& TESTING
FEASIBILITY
& VIABILITY
FINDINGS
& STORIES
INSIGHTS
& PROBLEMS
PROTOTYPES
& CONCEPTS
IMPLEMENTA-
TION PLANS
EMPATHY
ABDUCTIVE
EXPERIMENT
SATISFICING
DIVERGENT
CONVERGENT
DIVERGENT
CONVERGENT
APPROACH OUTPUT MODEMINDSET
*Discover, Deﬁne, Develop & Deliver: UK Design Council Terminology

DISCOVER
Imagine getting in to a big traditional market. People roaming around from different
directions, sellers offering various kinds of produce, you let yourself guided by the smell, you
find the chaos to be both exciting and challenging. Your aim is to explore and discover.
You would find the discover phase to be as chaotic and dynamic as being in a traditional
market . In the discover phase, the aim is to gather as many knowledge as possible on the
problem at hand and the people’s life context surrounding the problem. When going through
the discover phase, you would find yourself getting familiar with the users and the
organizations you design for.

DEFINERoaming the traditional market to find those perfect ingredients can be an exciting, yet
challenging experience. How to tell the fresh ingredients from the not-so-fresh? Which
produce should you choose to create a palatable dish? To decide, you really need to
understand what you are looking for. In the design process, we call this phase define, a
process where we try to make sense of all the information we gathered in the discover phase.
In the define process, we aim at defining and interpreting key insights and problems.
Trying to synthesize a significant amount of information into insights and problems that help
guide ideation requires a balance between a structured approach and an exploration mindset.
The balance allows for a focused, yet rich and diverse analysis.

DEVELOP
Once you have collected all the ingredients you need, it is time to get your hands dirty and
create the magic in your kitchen. The ﬁrst attempt on creating that perfect dish may not turn
out as expected, and that’s when you start to experiment with stuff. In the design process, the
magic takes place during the ideation session, and when you translate insights into ideas and
concepts that are both novel and relevant to people’s lives.
Just like the cooking experience, you need to get your hands dirty and experiment with
different aspect of the ideas. Permit yourself to take risk and allow space for early failures, to
enable you exploring a wide range of possibilities.

DELIVER
Once you work your magic in the kitchen and before you present your dish to the guest, it
would be useful to reﬂect a bit and think of ways to make the dining experience memorable.
Think of it as a way to ensure the long-term success of our solutions.
In the design process, the goal of deliver stage is to ensure the feasibility and viability of the
concepts. The deliver phase will bring the concepts forward into implementation. This means
that not only you need to ensure quality, but also you need to track the progress of the
implementation of the solution.

Well-discovered insights are pivotal to creating solutions that are human-centered and add relevant
values to people’s lives. However, in a highly cluttered world, great design output requires not only
relevant solutions, but also ones that stand out from the crowd. Creativity thus becomes a strong
differentiator in design solutions, and it has the power to turn the logic gathered from insights into
magic.
Creativity creates the wow factor, while user-centered insights enable us to design experiences that
speak to people’s heart. However, There is a common belief that certain people possess a mystical
creative thought process that puts them above others in their skills of producing creative and
groundbreaking thought. However, recent researches have proven that creativity is a skill that can be
nurtured and trained, thus a skill that can be accessed by everyone.
As creativity is essentially about creating solutions that are both novel/original and useful/appropriate, it
takes several ingredients to whip tasty creative outputs.
THE CASE FOR CREATIVITY

I want to better
understand the needs of
the people I am
designing for!

The Mindset

Know your
biases
There’s a fun in not knowing. It takes you to explore ways that you might
not have thought about before. In the discovery phase, we shall not let our
assumptions get in the way of our research. Furthermore, by being aware
of our biases, we extend our ability to reﬂect on the ﬁndings.

Capture the
root cause,
not symptoms
A good research approach should capture the underlying reasons behind
people’s action/behavior. There are several factors that limit a researcher’s
ability to capture the root cause of a problem: (1) people might not be
aware of, or have difficulties on articulating the underlying needs, and (2)
they might not feel comfortable to open up to you.

Seek for
stories
In any conversation, half of the battle lies in establishing rapport
and trust. The more people are willing to share, the more
opportunities arise to nest great insights. That’s why it’s
important to see interviews more like a conversation, where we
don’t just aim to capture ﬁndings, but be genuinely interested in
listening to people’s stories. Stories speak from the heart and
the mind, and the key to relevant insight is when we can
navigate the space between what people feel, do, and say.

Observe
people’s
flow of
experience
The make or break of a design solution often lies in the design
and the interaction of various resources supporting the
experience. In the discovery phase, it is important to explore
people’s flow of experience in interacting with a certain
product/service, as well as defining the resources that support
the experience we envisions.

Tap into
people’s
instinctual
nature
As much as we like to see ourselves as rational beings, truth is we can be an irrational beings,
especially when it comes to decision-making. A well-crafted research should be able to tap
on the people’s instinctual nature; the gap between what they say and what they do, and
their reaction to emotional or visceral experiences. Instead of collecting information through
probing and conditioning, it is better for researchers in this case to closely observe the
participants and let them take a more active role. By understanding people’s instinctual
nature, we can better produce insights for creating relevant experiences that people may not
even realize they need.

Identify
extreme
behaviors
Approaching extreme users or assembling various types of
users together are useful to harvest unexpected insights,
alternative uses, and area for improvements. By approaching
these “special” groups, we can collect rich information on
various interaction possibilities and issues that may have been
overlooked by the “regular” users.

The Tools

Assumption Dumption
A warmup exercise to reveal the assumptions held by the group
Preparations:
1. 5 mins: Individually, list down all assumptions that you have about the
problem you are working on; the user’s traits, the business needs -
basically all perception and ideas of the issues at hand.
2. 5 mins: Everyone brieﬂy shares his/her assumptions to the group.
3. 5 mins: Document all the assumptions in themes/clusters.
Try to be aware of the group’s assumptions during ﬁeldwork and
avoid building inferences based on our own biases.
easy
15
minutes
explore
Know your biases

Tap into
people’s
instinctual
nature
As much as we try to be rational beings, humans are engineered to often be very irrational,
especially when it comes to decision-making. A well-crafted research should be able to tap
on the people’s instinctual nature; the gap between what they say and what they do, and
their reaction to emotional or visceral experiences. Instead of collecting information through
probing and conditioning, it is better for researchers in this case to closely observe the
participants and let them take a more active role. By understanding people’s instinctual
nature, we can better produce insights to create relevant experiences that people might not
even be aware that they need it.

What|How|Why
A way to discover how and why people do things they do.
Preparations:
1. 10 mins: ask the respondent to list down things that they usually do
when exposed to the problem/challenge.
2. If time permits, spend some time to shadow respondents when they
do things on their list. Otherwise ask them how they do it and why.
medium
30
minutes
explore
Capture root cause, not symptoms
Source: Stanford d.school bootleg

5 why’s
A way to quickly uncover the root cause of the problem by asking 5
consecutive “why..” questions.
Preparations:
1. 10 mins: Try to formulate a “why” question, and question the
respondent’s answer by asking another “why” question for 5
consecutive times, or until you can no longer get closer to the root
cause
easy
10
minutes
explore

Card Sorting
A way to expose people’s expected model of an experience. It is also
used to reveal expectations and priorities about the experience itself.
Preparations:
1. 15 minutes: Prior to the conversation, list possible features, resources,
functions or design attributes that can support a certain experience.
Write down each element on individual cards.
2. 10 minutes: Ask respondent to organize the cards in a way that
makes the most sense to them.
easy
30
minutes
explore
Observe people’s ﬂow of experience

Camera Journal
A self-conducted notation technique where respondents are asked to
keep a written and visual diary of their perceptions and activities related
to an experience. It is useful in revealing respondent’s point of view and
behavior.
Preparations:
1. Give respondent a written note for them to jot down thoughts that
spark whenever they are exposed to the issue being observed.
2. Ask them to take pictures on their phone of all the things that they
think to be relevant to the issue.
3. Get back to them in a couple of days and ask them to explain the
notes and pictures they have taken. Look for connections and
patterns that can better explain their behavior.
easy explore
Tap into people’s instinctual nature

Expert Interviews
Reaching out to expert in a speciﬁc topic to gather large amount of
insights in a short time period
Preparations:
1. Identify the areas on which you need an expert to talk to.
2. Recruit the relevant experts and try to talk to several different experts
to expand the team’s way of thinking about the issue
3. Get back to the expert for concept testing/feedback. Experts often
give richer insights when presented with tangible outputs.
medium
1 - 3
hours
explore
Source: HCD Toolkit

Source: HCD Toolkit

Love Thy Respondent
An approach to build a “conversation-like” style in an interview.
Ingredients:
1. Be compassionate, by trying to understand the disconnections
between what we believe, what people say, and what they do.
2. Be excited as if you’re going on a date! Try to get to know your
respondent in a way that you would like to get to know your date.
Extend your love to them as if they are your long-lost friends.
3. Encourage them to say whatever they have in mind. Once you have
established trust, they will be much more open to share things.
4. Use judgment as tool to reflect, instead of a way to influence the
direction of the interview. Whenever judgment occurs, reflect and
think of the gap between your perception/values and theirs.
5. Expose yourself vulnerabilities and show your flaws. That way, people
will be able to relate to you more and less reluctant to open up.
medium explore
Seek for stories

Extreme User Interviews
A way to gather insights from people who are extremely familiar or
completely unfamiliar with the product or services. The approach often
uncovers key issues of the experience and opportunity for improvement.
Preparations:
1. Identify users that fall under these categories: (1) extremely familiar,
(2) completely unfamiliar, (3) loving fan, (4) utterly hate.
2. Conduct conversation with each user group separately.
difficult
1 - 3
hours
explore
Identify Extreme Behaviors

Unfocus Group
A group discussion approach that assembles people from diverse
backgrounds (beyond demographic & psychographic proﬁles).
Preparations:
1. Identify interest groups that are exposed (to a different degree) with
the experience being observed/products being tested. Try to think
beyond the obvious e.g. a foot-fetishist to discuss fashion sandals.
2. Invite one person from each interest group and form a group of
maximum ﬁve people.
3. During the discussion, stimulate the group by providing range of
materials or other relevant things that they can try on and experiment
with.
difficult
1 - 2
hours
explore
Identify Extreme Behaviors

Show Me How
A walkthrough of the user’s interaction with a particular service or
product. “Show me How” often exposes unexpected/alternative uses of a
product/service that can be a source of great insight.
Preparations:
1. Ask a respondent to share and show how they usually interact with a
product/service.
2. Observe their interaction, and look for gaps between what they
initially say and how they really do it.
medium
30-60
minutes
explore
validate
Observe people’s ﬂow of experience

Rapid Ethnography
An observation approach where researcher spend significant amount of
time with people relevant to the challenge, within a certain budget
constraints & time demands.
Ingredients:
1. Keep all assumptions on the back of your head. Your goal is to learn
context, habits, rituals, and meanings around the relevant experience
being observed.
2. Maintain the balance between planned research e.g. concise field
guide & book, and the curiosity for exploration i.e. constantly ask
“Why..”
3. Experiments with multiple techniques. This cookbook provides
enough tools that you can try out during your fieldwork.
4. Find ways to establish trust in order for you to be able to partake in
the respondent’s natural environment.
medium
1 - 3
days
explore

Experience Harvesting
A way of collecting insights through stimuli that evoke people’s emotions
Preparations:
1. Identify aspects of the products/services that people value the most.
2. Create artifacts or narratives that can evoke emotional reactions from
people, in order for us to harvest insight on how people perceive the
experience.
3. Put the artifacts and narratives in a real-life, non-conditioned setting.
4. Observe people’s reaction when exposed to the message and ask
them how they feel about it.
medium 2 hours
explore
validate
Tips: Think of the most relevant touchpoint to expose the artifacts/narratives.
Tap into people’s instinctual nature

DISCOVER
TIPS
listen & observe
don’t judge
be curious
be genuinely interested
no leading questions
be creative with research
know when to stop and pull back
at the end of the day, debrief to reﬂect

I want to make sense of
the information gathered
from my research!

The Approach

Put things
in contextStarting the deﬁne process can be quite challenging because its
often hard to deﬁne the starting point. Organization and
structuring of insights is useful to avoid overloading and
overcrowding of information. The trick is to keep a holistic/
meta-level structuring, to allow diverse themes to emerge
during the synthesis process.
1

Make connections
Once we structure the stories and ﬁndings, it is easier to start
deﬁning insights that can be translated into ideas. To uncover
the true nature or the core reasoning on why people do things,
it is useful to make connection between various insights that
have been gathered so far.
2

..and identify gaps/
disconnectionsA big part of connection-making involves the exploration of
gaps between people’s reality and expectations; between
people and the environment they operate in, between different
stakeholders, and so on. By understanding the gaps and
disconnections that exist in people’s lives, it gives room for
designer to create solutions that can address those gaps -
solutions that are more relevant and useful to people.
3

Formulate a
problem statement
Often times, poor solutions is a result of the identification of a
“wrong problem”. Designers often deal with ill-defined
problems, with incomplete information and conflicting values.
Half of the battle in a design process lies in defining the relevant
problem to work with.
4

Create heuristic
outputs to help
guide decisions
People resort to heuristics, or rule of thumbs, to guide their
behavior and decisions. The rule of thumb may not be ideal or
reﬂect the totality of the issue, but it helps people to reach a
decision without a great deal of complexity. By resorting to
heuristics, we create sufficient outputs that reﬂect the key
opportunities gathered from the research.
5

Service Ecology
Identification of direct and indirect variables making up a service
experience, and the relationship between those variables.
Preparations:
1. 15 minutes: Based on the research, categorize the insights based on
variables that influence the service experience. The variables can be
features, stakeholders, spaces, feelings, and objects.
2. 15 minutes: Look for connections between each variable in order to
figure out the role of each variable in influencing the service
experience.
easy
30
minutes
synthesis
Put things into context
explore

G.F.E
A way to categorize insights based on people’s goals, fears and
expectations.
Preparations:
1. Group the ﬁndings/stories into goals (the objective of using the
product/service), fears (their worries that drive them to use the
product/service and their worries about the experience itself), and
expectations (what people expect to get from the experience).
easy
30
minutes
synthesis
Tips: Be clear on the difference between goals and expectations e.g.
goal is “to have a fair skin” and expectation is “to be desirable.”
Put things into contextPut things into context

The Target Group Pattern
A way to synthesize the different target groups who have a certain
affinity with the product
Preparations:
1. Identify spectrums of traits that serve as a base to cluster different
target groups.
2. Locate the trait of each target group in each spectrum.
3. Identify target group with similar trait pattern based on its vicinity
within the spectrum, and consider to group them together.
easy 1 hour synthesis
Put things into contextPut things into context

The Life Context
Categorization of insights based on the various contexts of people’s lives
inﬂuenced by the product/service.
Ingredients:
Group the stories/ﬁndings based on the following life context:
•! Need: the functional or direct reason why people use the product
•! Pain: the gap between people’s reality and expectation
•! Desire: what people wish to happen, the latent need
•! Habit: how people usually interact with the product
•! Moment: when and where people usually interact with the product
medium 1 hour synthesis
Put things into context

Clustering
A way to structure stories and ﬁndings in themes
Preparations:
1. 20 minutes: Write down all insights on post-its – one insight per post-
it, and color-code the insights based on which context it falls under
(see exercises on “put things in context.”)
2. Put all post-it notes on a visible wall-space.
3. 20 minutes: Try to group the insights based on its relevant themes.
Do not aim to make everything perfect – the aim of clustering is just
to better make sense of the information clutter.
easy
45
minutes
synthesis
Make connections

Relationship Map
A way to map the relationship between various stakeholders involved in
an experience.
Preparations:
1. 10 minutes: Group the users of the experience into primary,
secondary, and supporters (groups who inﬂuence, but not necessarily
use the experience).
2. 15 minutes: Identify the interaction that takes place between various
users.
3. 20 minutes: Identify the interaction that has not yet existed, or
obviously need improvement. Use those broken interaction as a seed
for ideation.
easy
30 - 60
minutes
synthesis
Make connections
Source: From Theory to Practice - Designing for Empathy: Artefact Design Resources

A.B.C
A tool to synthesize insights gathered from observational studies, to
thoroughly understand events that occur within an experience.
Preparations:
1. 10 minutes: List down behaviors (“B”) being observed in the research
2. 20 minutes: For every behavior, try to look for antecedent (“A”), or
triggers/activities that precedes a problem behavior, and
consequences (“C”), or events that immediately follows a behavior.
Make connections
medium
30
minutes
synthesis

2x2 Matrix
An approach for organizing insights using two spectra.
Preparations:
1. 5 minutes: Pick two spectra that are relevant for the challenge (e.g.
high to low complexity, high to low impact, cheap to expensive). It
could be feelings, products, motivations, or anything that can be
useful for the process to move forward.
2. 15 minutes: Try to see where the correlation makes most sense for
each insight and plot them in the relevant quadrant.
3. Try to experiment with various kinds of spectra to get the one that is
most meaningful and informative.
medium
20 - 60
minutes
synthesis
Make connections

Service Failures
Identifying areas throughout a service where providers may not be able
to keep its service promise and where disappointments can occur.
Preparations:
1. 20 minutes: Map the flow of experience that a user undertakes when
using the service (based on the research findings).
2. 40 minutes: Identify disconnection between people’s expectation
and the actual service (the pain points). Take into consideration
people’s expectation on the system, process & environment
surrounding the service, as well as how other stakeholder’s action
influence the experience.
Identify disconnections
medium
60
minutes
synthesis

The Psychopath
An experience in a person’s life is influenced by a lifetime of other
experiences. This activity is aimed at finding the “disconnections”
between the experiences as an avenue for new design opportunities.
Preparations:
1. Draw a pie graph with 6 slices: “past”, “future”, beliefs”, “habits”,
“systems”, and “places”
2. Spend five minutes to identify experiences on each labels (this is
ideally done during the discover phase): How has the user’s past
influenced the experience? What does the user consider to be an
ideal future? What are the guiding beliefs of the user? What are the
relevant habits of the user? What systems currently influence the
user’s experience? and What are the environments where the user
exist?.
3. Identify the “disconnections” between each label e.g. does the “past”
conflict with the current “habit”?
4. Use the disconnects as a seed for the ideation session
Identify disconnections
medium
20 - 60
minutes
synthesis
Source: Alisan Atvur - www.alisanatvur.com

Point of View (P.O.V)
An approach to reframe challenges into a workable problem
statement(s).
Preparations:
1. Unpack the research ﬁndings by breaking down variables that might
be relevant to synthesis work.
2. Create statements based on the following madlib: [USER] needs to
[USER’S NEED] because [RELEVANT INSIGHT]
3. Play with different Point of Views to get a rich understanding of the
problem.
easy
30 - 60
minutes
synthesis
Formulate the Problem Statement

How Might We..
Short questions/problem statements that are used as a seed for ideation.
Preparations:
1. Based on different point of views, try to create problem statements
that begin with “how might we…?” by breaking the larger challenge
into smaller actionable pieces
2. Try to frame the statement that strikes the balance between broad
and narrow, to allow wide range of possible solutions with helpful
constraints.
medium
30
minutes
synthesis
Tips: Some ways to formulate the question is by elevating the positive
parts of the challenge, removing the negative parts, explore opposite
options, creating analogy or change a status quo. Be creative in
designing your How Might We questions!
Formulate the Problem Statement

Insight Platform
A document that describes the overall insights gathered from the
research
Preparations:
1. During the synthesis process, cluster the insights into themes.
2. Identify several important insights on each theme, and document
them.
3. Built a coherent and appealing narratives to showcase the insights
and its relevance to the challenge at hand.
easy
30 - 60
minutes
synthesis
Create outputs to guide decisions

Persona
A set of archetypal users of a product/service that represents the needs
of a larger group, in terms of values and personal characteristics.
Preparations:
1. 20 minutes: Based on the research ﬁndings, identify behavioral
patterns. Use similar and consistent motivations and behaviors to
create a persona.
2. 30 minutes: Write persona description, including name and
demographic, narrated with his/her behavior, preferences, and a day
in life.
3. Share the personas across the organization to create a shared
understanding of who you are designing for.
easy
60
minutes
synthesis

Experience/Design Principles
Set of principles/must-do’s derived from the insights gathered. They help
guide a consistent experience throughout the different touchpoints
Preparations:
1. 20 minutes: Identify the insights that may indicate people’s important
considerations on using the product/service
2. 30 minutes: Based on the insights, develop list of principles, or
elements that has to be in place in the solution.
easy
30 - 60
minutes
synthesis

SYNTHESIS
TIPS
Be systematic & seek for patterns
Use heuristics (common sense, experience based rules)
Follow your intuition
Sufficient, rather than perfect
When stuck, sleep on it

i want to bring my ideas
to life!

Prototype
fast &
early
Visual artifacts are useful to articulate concepts. Physical representation of an
idea offers an effective way to communicate ideas and contextualize thoughts.
At this stage, the physical representations are used more as an evocative tool,
not as a way to suggest the ﬁnal form of the design solution.

Share your
work-in-progress
Don’t wait until you are done with the ﬁnished product to show it to people!
People’s feedback on a work-in-progress is a valuable source of improvement.
Test your design to people around you and people who might use the product/
service. The key is to make sure that your prototype is comprehensive enough
that people can envision the ﬁnished output when they try the prototype.

Simulate
the experience
Simulation is a good way to test the ﬂow of the experience being designed and
how people perceive the experience. In addition, people are more likely to
experiment in a simulated setting as it bears no or little risk, unlike reality.

Break the
experience into
parts that sum up
the whole
As people’s experience is essentially supported by various resources, it is
important for us to be able to envision the whole interaction among the
resources, and how people interact with the resources themselves. In order to
do this, we have to break down each interaction that people may encounter and
make sure that the interactions can support the intended outcome.

Sketching
Drawing, models, narratives, storyboards that are used to communicate
the general context of a concept/idea.
Preparations:
1. Each individual chooses several ideas that they want to sketch.
2. Spend not more than 5 minutes to sketch the idea in any form you
want.
3. Do a sketch for another idea that someone else’s have previously
sketch. At the end of the session, the team will have several sketches
of an idea.
easy
15 - 60
minutes
explore
synthesis
Prototype Fast & Early

Rapid Prototyping
A way to nurture the culture of making in the ideation process, by
creating physical representation of ideas in a rapid manner.
Preparations:
1. 20 minutes: create 20 different prototypes in silence. This means 1
prototype every minute!
2. 20 minutes: present the prototypes to the group and look for areas to
explore further
3. 20 minutes: each individual chooses one prototype that he/she
wants to reﬁne and work on.
easy
60
minutes
explore
synthesis
Prototype Fast & Early

Minimum Viable Product (M.V.P)
A prototype of a new product/service that allows designers to get
maximum amount of validated learnings about user’s interaction, with
the least effort.
Ingredients:
- The MVP should describe the problem you are trying to solve and
also show the solutions.
- Think of a form of interaction that allows people to share your
proposed product/service. This gives indication on whether people
would be willing to share your content to others.
- Consider using multiple MVPs
- Identify the people you want to test your product/service on.
-
Be ready to incorporate people’s feedback into the ﬁnal version of
the product/service.
medium
difficult
validate
explore
Share your work-in-progress
Source:Eric Ries - The Lean Startup

Pretotyping
A way to test the appeal and preference of a concept immediately after
the concept is born but before investment is made in the development
Preparation:
1. Identify the demand-sensitive questions that must be answered by
the pretotype i.e. questions that answer if the concept is the right “it”
2. Select the pretotype model that ﬁts best for the concept:
a. A fake medium to assess number of people who are interested
enough to respond to the medium e.g. a “contact us if you
wanna buy” button
b. Artefacts that conveys the basic form and aesthetics of the
concept
c. Humanifying complex technology e.g. using real people for
universal translation device
d. Limited edition products
e. Minimum Viable Products
Share your work-in-progress
medium
difficult
validate
explore

Scenario
A sequential, orchestrated narratives that describes the experience of a
user when interacting with the product/services.
Preparation:
1. Identify the key features of the envisioned experience, as well as the
flow that a user undertakes when interaction with the product or
services.
2. Built a story/narrative that describes the key features and the flow of
experience. Do not try to fit everything in to the story – the key to
good scenario lies in its simplicity.
3. Translate the narratives in sequence of actions. Mediums like
storyboards can help.
4. Create a short video based on the storyboard.
medium 3 hours
validate
communicate
Simulate the Experience

Wireframe
A visual presentation that illustrates elements and layout in the User
Interface (UI).
Preparation:
1. Identify key UIs that need to be visualized, and the relationship
among them. A sitemap will be quite helpful.
2. Create a basic UI template, in considerations of the actual platform
for implementation.
3. Take each template to represent a key UI, lay down visual elements
which may include but not limited to headings, texts, navigation bars,
buttons, and image placeholders.
4. Show the relationship between a key UI to another by highlighting
the visual elements that link them.
easy
30 - 90
minutes
validate
communicate

Usability Testing
Testing approach involving users to try the prototype of the product/
services, to identify usability issues and the reason behind the issue.
Preparation:
1. Create different scenarios of the possible interaction of the concept
2. Prepare a survey that capture the satisfaction level of users in
interacting with the product/service.
3. Ask users to try out the prototype by giving them a scenario
4. Ask them to think-aloud what they feel and do while performing the
task
5. Ask users to ﬁll the usability survey
easy
30 - 60
minutes
validate
explore

Experience Prototyping
A simulation of how the product / service will work and how people can
use it. The form of experience prototype can be as simple as paper
sketches up to a fully working product / service.
Preparation:
1. Decide which parts of the experience to be simulated and which
touchpoints to include.
2. Create prototypes to represent the touchpoints. Arrange them based
on an ideal scenario.
3. Invite target users or other stakeholders to try using the product /
service.
4. Observe and record people’s feedback as they are going through the
product / service experience.
medium validate
explore

User Journey
A story from the user’s point of view about how he/she experiences the
product/service, down to the detailed interactions that he/she has with
each touchpoint.
Preparation:
1. Figure out the stages that the users go through, starting from when
they ﬁrst become aware of the product / service until they ﬁnish
using it.
2. In each stage, describe what users do with related touchpoints and
how they think / feel.
3. Identify pain points and gaps in the user journey, so the experience
can be improved.
easy
1 - 2
hours
validate
explore
Break the experience into parts
that sums up the whole

Service Blueprint
An operational tool that describes the nature and the characteristics of the
service interaction in enough detail to verify, implement and maintain it.
Preparation:
1. Outline the main interaction stages along the service experience in a
horizontal line.
2. For each stage, extract customer actions and front of stage
interactions between the line of interaction. Add relevant touch
points and physical evidences.
3. Under the line of visibility, detail out backend interaction and support
process that support the designed experiences
medium
difficult
1 - 3
hours
validate
explore
Break the experience into parts
that sums up the whole

points of reﬂection
Remember! Each artifact created has to be able to answer the three key aspects:
- what it is
- why people want to use it
- how to use it
Although seems like a common sense, the fun in exploring many different routes
during the develop phase often lead the concepts to go to directions that are not
aligned with the initial insights! So, always reﬂect back on whether the three
aspects embedded in each artifact link back to the insights generated.

i want to implement my
concepts!

Business Model Canvas
A visual tool for describing business models, structured into nine
essential components covering the business’ value proposition,
stakeholders, activities, and finances.
Preparation:
1. Get a template of business model canvas (see
businessmodelgeneration.com)
2. There is no fixed order to fill out the business model canvas, but it is
suggested to start from the customers.
3. Customer Segments – for whom are you designing the solution?
4. Value Propositions – what is the solution and what values are
incorporated?
5. Channels – how to deliver the solution to the customers?
6. Customer Relationships – how to delight the customers with great
experiences?
7. Revenue Streams – how can we gather revenue from the use of the
solution?
8. Key Resources – what resources are needed to produce the solution?
9. Key Activities – how to process the resources into the solution?
10.Key Partnerships – whom can we engage in the business process to
make it more effective and efficient?
11. Cost Structure – how to manage the cost involved in the business
process?
easy
1-2
hours
evaluate
Source: Business Model Canvas

Human Centered Design - Deliver
An implementation framework to ensure that solutions are implemented
well and sustained over the long term. The framework also includes
plans for ongoing learning and iterations.
Preparation:
1. 30 – 45 mins: Develop a sustainable revenue model:
a. Identify how each solution will provide values to users
b. Identify how much do those values worth for users
c. Identify revenue sources and models
2. 30 – 45 mins: Identify capabilities required for delivering solutions:
a. Identify all possible actors that can deliver the solution, and list
the pros and cons on each delivering possibilities
b. List the human, manufacturing, ﬁnancial, and technical
capabilities that will be required for each solution.
c. For solutions requiring partnership, create a list of potential
partners
3. 30 – 45 mins: create innovation and implementation pipeline:
a. Create following matrix: Put down all solutions on post-its and
place it in the appropriate quadrant. Discuss with team if they
are happy with the distribution of ideas
b. Create implementation timeline and champions (person-in-
charge) for each milestone
4. Consider doing mini pilots & iterations (e.g. using MVP or pretotype)
5. Create a learning plan
medium
2 - 5
hours
evaluate
Source: HCD Toolkit

Prioritization
The holistic solution may comprise of a number of features which might
not be delivered all at once. To extract the essence of the solution,
features are prioritized by the severity of the issues that they are
addressing.
Preparation:
1. For each feature of the solution, relate it back to the user needs as
well as the business goals.
2. Identify trade-offs and issues that determine the importance Cluster
the features based on relevancy to the user needs and business
goals. Use visual marks to distinguish the clusters.
3. Present the solution in the order of the most relevant features.
easy
30 - 60
minutes
evaluate

Be divergent
Many creative outputs lie in remote associations, or associations to a certain
thing that seemed to be unrelated. To access remote associations, we have to
allow divergent thinking exercises to take place during creative brainstorming.
The purpose of divergent exercises is to open up different associations/
directions to the challenge on hand. Divergent exercises are most useful during
the initial phase of ideation, where concepts/ideas are still fuzzy and allows for
wide exploration space.

Convergence
Divergent exercises are useful to expand ideas into many different directions,
but novelty alone is of little value if not useful. Converging exercises are aimed
at synthesizing and making sense of ideas to make them more viable, feasible
and relevant. While divergent exercises require more of experimental mindset,
convergent exercises mostly utilize analytical mindset.
turning the novel into useful & meaningful ideas

Managing
brainstormCreative ideation process often involves signiﬁcant time for brainstorming.
Two heads are better than one, they say. That is true, but two heads are also
more complicated to manage than one. One of the biggest challenges in
brainstorming is productivity blocking, where the group environment impacts
how individuals behave in the group. Some can freeride, and some can overly
dominate. Therefore, in a group brainstorming, there has to be a fair mix
between individual and group exercises in order to get the best of both
worlds.

Importance of
incubationCreative block is one of creativity’s biggest enemies, and there is no
straightforward way to get out of it. When experiencing creative block, it’s
not that we are unable to come up with ideas, but we have a very strong
association with a certain concept/idea that it inhibits us to think of another
idea! We call this phenomenon “fixation.”
When fixated, many of us tend to go on and try to solve the problem. What’s
interesting is that our brain does not necessarily agree with that. Sometimes
the best way to come up with an idea is by taking some time off thinking
about the problem. This process is called incubation. You must encounter at
time that you get unexpected ideas on unexpected times; while running,
showering, or when you work on other projects. What you do here is actually
giving time for your brain to reboot and make itself more flexible in
wandering around the realms of associations.
Some incubation tips from our friends!
- Aya does High Impact Training in between work.
- Sulis put a waterproof note in the shower, just to keep all ideas
documented.
- Laris use the Sleep Cycle App to make sure that she’s awake at the
state where she can still remember all her dreams.
- Bayu likes to change his work environment every now and then.

Ask Google Images
Exploring different associations to a certain stimuli based on google
images search result.
Preparation:
1. 3 min: in the group, do google image search using keywords related
to the challenge.
2. 5 min: inspired by the images, each individual in the group should
come up with ideas on how to solve the problem.
be divergent
easy
10
minutes
explore

What Would Chuck Norris Do
Imagining what would a certain public figure or famous brand do when
exposed with the challenge.
Preparation:
1. 1 min: each individual in the group has to identify their favorite public
figure, dead or alive, fictional or real.
2. 5 mins: Come up with ideas on how the selected figure would solve
the challenge. Try to swap figures with others!
3. 1 min: each individual in the group has to identify the brand they hate
the most.
4. 5 mins: Come up with ideas on how the selected brands would solve
the challenge. Try to swap brands with others!
easy
10 - 15
minutes
explore
be divergent

Time Machine
Exploring alternative solutions based on what people on a certain time
period might do when they are exposed with the problem.
Preparation:
1. 5 min: Each individual in the group should come up with ideas/
assumptions on how people in a certain era in the past would
approach the problem.
2. 3 min: Share ideas to the group, and add more ideas if applicable.
3. 5 min: Each individual in the group should come up with ideas/
assumptions on how people in far future would solve the problem.
4. 3 min: Share ideas to the group, and add more ideas if applicable.
be divergent
easy
15
minutes
explore

What if..
Imagining solutions to the problem by formulating a “what if…” question
e.g. “what if our product is a TV network?” or “what if our service can be
accessed by aliens?”
Preparation:
1. 5 min: in a group, formulate 5 “what if..” questions.
2. 5 min: Individually, everyone comes up with ideas to answer the what
if questions.
3. 10 min: In the group, discuss on how those ideas can be made more
relevant to the problem at hand, by modifying some aspects of the
ideas.
be divergent
easy
20
minutes
explore

Negative Brainstorm
A brainstorming technique where the group comes up with the worst
ideas to solve the problem, and subsequently turn the bad ideas into
good ideas.
Preparation:
1. 5 mins: individually, think of the worst way to solve the problem.
2. 5 mins: in the group, think of some positive aspects of the bad ideas.
Remember, there is always a positive aspect of any ideas!
3. 10 mins: Individually, create new ideas, incorporating the positive
aspects of the bad ideas.
be divergent
easy
20
minutes
explore

Forced Associations
Combine two ideas through by forcing connections between the ideas
Preparation:
1. 10 mins: each individual chooses two or more ideas, and combine
those ideas into a more coherent idea.
2. 10 mins: share the combination to the group, and look for patterns
that allow for themes/clusters to emerge.
easy
20
minutes
synthesis
explore
convergence

Power of 10
Reframing technique used for synthesizing ideas, by trying to consider
the ideas at a varied magnitude of framing.
Preparation:
1. 1 min: each individual selects one idea that they want to work on
2. 10 mins: in pairs, one individual challenges the idea that the other
individual chose, using the power of 10 technique. The constraints
should change the magnitude of the idea space e.g. “What if it’s a
physical space?”, “How to complete the experience in one minute?
Two hours?”, “What if there’s no money involved?”
3. 10 mins: change turns
medium
20
minutes
synthesis
explore
convergence

R.M.D.L
A way to harvest and cluster ideas based on categories that encourage
the group to not narrow down too fast, and hang on to the ideas that
might not seem so plausible, yet meaningful.
Preparation:
1. 5 mins: cluster the ideas based on the four categories: rational, most
meaningful, the darling, and the long shot
2. 15 mins: use different mixes of exercises to make the darling and the
long shot more plausible (e.g. the power of ten or forced
associations). Elaborate more on the rational and most meaningful
using divergent exercises (e.g. negative brainstorm)
easy
20
minutes
synthesis
convergence

Weighting
A way of converging using set of parameters and scores to determine
the overall appeal of the ideas.
Preparation:
1. 10 mins: In group, define five of the most important parameters in
assessing the successfulness of the project.
2. 5 - 20 mins: Each individual give score (1-10) to each ideas based on
each parameters
3. 5 – 10 mins: Calculate the weighted score of all ideas. If there is more
time to explore, kill the ideas that get highest and lowest score and
refine the mid-score ideas.
easy
20 - 40
minutes
synthesis
convergence

Build
A brainstorming approach where ideas are built based on the previous
ideas.
Preparation:
One individual in the group comes up with an idea, and the person next to
him/her has to create a new idea inspired by the ﬁrst idea, hence the
“build.” Individuals within the group keep on building on each other’s ideas
for 5 minutes. The group can repeat the cycle, building on new ideas, for
as long as they want.
easy
10 - 30
minutes
explore
synthesis
managing brainstorm

Brainwalking
The music chair of brainstorming, brainwalking utilizes the group’s
collective association to the challenge in an individual ideation-setting.
Preparation:
1. 1 mins: each individual has A3 paper and post-its in front of him/her.
Jot down all associations (words/concepts/perception) that you have
on the challenge in a scattered way.
2. 3 mins: not moving the paper, each individual moves to the place of
the person’s on his/her right, and think of ideas inspired by the
associations written on the paper in front of him/her.
3. 10-15 mins: the session continues with each individual moving to his/
her right every 3 minutes until everyone arrives to his/her initial
position.
easy
10 - 20
minutes
explore
managing brainstorm

BRAINSTORMING
TIPS
Defer judgment
Stick on the time
Put order in midst of chaos
Document everything
Encourage wild ideas
Quantity than quality
No hierarchies
Have fun

FULL MEAL
EXAMPLE -
BRAINSTORM FOR IDEATION
5 mins
30 mins
10 mins
10 mins
10 mins
10 mins
10 mins
Warmups
Individual Divergent Exercises
INCUBATION BREAK
Group Sharing
Group Divergent Exercises
Paired Power of 10
INCUBATION BREAK
Group Clustering
R.M.D.L and Voting
5 mins
5 mins
3 mins
10 mins
15 mins
15 mins
Assumption Dumption
Group Sharing
INCUBATION BREAK
Group Convergent Exercises
Share Ideas + Voting
2 mins
5 mins
3 mins
10 mins
10 mins
5 mins
List down associations
Group Sharing
Clustering & Convergence in
Group
Voting
LIGHT MEAL FEAST
approx. 30 mins
approx. 60 mins
approx. 90 mins

Still Curious?give us a shout! We will be happy to guide you through in more details on how you can make the most of
the cookbook!
Somia Customer Experience is consultancy that helps companies create
experiences that people love. We do this through discovering insights about the
customers and delivering strategy and design that is relevant, usable, and
delightful. Somia is based in Bali and Jakarta, Indonesia.
Contact us @
www.somiaconsulting.com

Big Smooches to these guys!
through thick and thin, better or worse, they have contributed their parts in making this cookbook possible..
..and the talents captured by the camera: Angga, Laris, Aya, Kasimyn, Asakoo, Runi, Sisie, Nuti, Sanjana,
Tirani, and Sulis

Customer Experience (CX) Cookbook

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