Part 3 of a series on cross-channel experience design in preparation for the Rapid Cross-channel Prototyping at the ASIS&T IA Summit 2017 in Vancouver. New decks coming every week.

1. PART 3 - ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. BUT WHAT ARE THEY?
CROSS-CHANNEL ECOSYSTEMS 101
Andrea @Resmini
January 5 2017

2. OK. ACTORS FIRST
We know actors very well. If we consider human actors, they are
the people formerly known as the users (TPFKATU)
The name change underlines their agency: they are the ones
who effectively shape the ecosystem. No ecosystem exists
without actors physically shaping it.
Software agents are or can be actors as well, of course

3. VERY WELL. TASKS THEN
Tasks are all the activities actors perform in their pursue of a
desired future state
Buying a ticket to go see a movie, for example,
or logging in to an online system to pay their taxes
Tasks are usually coupled with progression through touchpoints

4. MH. TOUCHPOINTS?
Touchpoints are individual points-of-interaction that become
part of the ecosystem as actors connect them freely to move on
towards their desired future state
When buying that ticket to go see a movie, the
touchpoint could be a website or a kiosk or a person
Touchpoints are medium-specific (digital, physical, biological)

5. WAIT. IS MY PHONE A TOUCHPOINT THEN? OR THE APP?
Both. Working with ecosystems implies adopting an
architectural, systemic mindset and a zoom in/out approach
The phone level might be ok when investigating mail usage
patterns in the workplace, the app better for more specific cases
Granularity cannot be discussed or set in abstract, but has to
reflect the project’s needs and scope at that moment

6. FOLLOWING. CHANN ...
No, let’s examine seams first. Seams are thresholds, connections
If you can move from touchpoint A to touchpoint X,
those two are permeable and share a seam
Seams transmit or use information circulating in the ecosystem

7. OK, SEAMS. NOW CHANN ...
Seams have a very interesting property: they allow the
experience to progress from touchpoint to touchpoint, but since
they convey information, which is medium-aspecific, they
actually can connect touchpoints residing in different channels
(it goes without saying that seams can connect touchpoints in
totally different locations, right? We’re talking semantics here)

8. DIFFER …? OK, CHANNELS. NOW.
Channels are a design construct. They do not really exist
The best way to imagine them is to think of pipes
carrying information around the ecosystem
Wherever you have a tap, you have a touchpoint
As much as taps live on pipes, touchpoints live on channels

9. PIPES? TAPS?
It’s a metaphor, nothing more. Let’s rephrase
Channels are pervasive layers that carry information
around the ecosystem, like pipes carry water around
The way they are created is a design decision. They could
reflect the formal sectioning of an EA model, be the result of the
designers’ own biases and interpretation, or anything in between

10. CHANNELS CONTAIN INFORMATION. AND?
That’s the catch. Channels are containers for specific “types” of
information. These types can be compared to loose categories
For example, a going-to-the-movie ecosystem could have a
“movie-related” channel. In there you would find IMDB, a kiosk
selling tickets, the website for the cinema, and staff

11. YES, BUT WHY ARE CHANNELS IMPORTANT?
Because we are working with information
and our goal is to support better experiences
If staff at the movie theater doesn’t know about tickets or a
kiosk malfunction (that is, they do not live on the same channel
and have no seams between them), we can be pretty sure that
lack of connection will result in a bad experience

12. UH. AND THE ECOSYSTEM?
The ecosystem is the product of the ontology, the conceptual
boundaries used to organize the experience itself
The ecosystem is a spatial structure in blended space, straddling
non-continuous digital and physical environments
Its boundaries are arbitrary and depend on goals and context

13. NON-LINEAR ECOSYSTEMS VS LINEAR EXPERIENCE
While the ecosystem itself is a non-linear network, actors
trying to achieve a future desired state consider themselves
moving along a personal, linear path of subsequent steps
Even more importantly, their experience is a linear narrative

14. 1
2
3
4
5
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A PATH THROUGH THE ECOSYSTEM
GREEN LINE: ACTOR’S PATH THROUGH AN ECOSYSTEM COMPRISING 3 DIFFERENT SYSTEMS

15. THE ECOSYSTEM’S BACKBONE IS INFORMATION
Actors constantly create, remediate, and use information
This information is transferred along the actor’s path and
through the ecosystem, increasing its complexity
Designing a successful cross-channel experience means
optimizing the information flows and increasing resilience

16. OK, SO WHERE DO YOU START FROM?
Pragmatically, from the formulation of an individual,
organizational, or social need or pain
Conceptually, from an actor’s experience

17. PART 4 COMING JAN 12
“HEY! THAT’S NOT AN ANSWER”
Andrea @Resmini