The Context: Imagine yourself on the team responsible for revolutionizing the travel booking application of “Adventure Fiasco.” 🌴✈️
No pressure, but this is the app that the agents of this agency will use to help travelers plan their trips. Oh, and the icing on the cake: the customers themselves will be glued to this screen while the travel agents create the trip. There’s no room for error! It needs to be both intuitive and elegant. 😎
Let’s get started:
What are the JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) that our travel agents must accomplish?
I’ve envisioned 2 of the main jobs our travel agents will need to perform (but you’ll conduct interviews):
Create a Custom Itinerary: Our travel agents will need to collaborate with customers to create custom travel itineraries, taking into account their preferences, interests, and constraints. This involves building the skeleton of the adventure.
Manage Reservations and Availability: Agents will need to juggle availability, confirmations, and payments. Imagine the complexity when exotic destinations and trendy excursions come into play…etc.
Now, you might be wondering how to prioritize these jobs? That’s where the Evaluation and Prioritization Matrix comes into play! It will allow us to rank these jobs based on essential criteria such as importance, frequency, and frustration. This way, you’ll know where to focus our efforts first for an optimal customer experience. 🎯
Box 1: Job To Be Done: The winning job is: Create a Custom Itinerary! Using the Job Story format, we note our job:
When: When a customer wants a personalized trip, I want (the travel agent) the tool to allow me to select destinations, add specific activities and excursions, and customize the itinerary based on the customer’s preferences. So I can: create a unique travel itinerary tailored to my customer’s needs, ensuring an unforgettable travel experience.
This job is essential for our agents to design custom trips that meet each customer’s expectations. It requires an intuitive and flexible interface that allows travelers to bring their dream adventure to life.
Lean JX Canvas – Box 2: Goal
Box 1 showed you that when the customer wants a personalized trip, our travel agent needs to be able to create a custom itinerary.
In Box 2, I suggest exploring this goal further!
Outcome: Enable the travel agent to create a unique travel itinerary tailored to the customer’s needs, ensuring an unforgettable travel experience.
When a customer desires a customized travel experience, it’s crucial that the travel agent has a tool that allows them to personalize every detail. Personalization is the key to making the trip memorable and unique every time.
Lean JX Canvas – Box 3: Key Tasks
Box 2 showed you that our travel agent must be able to create a custom travel itinerary to meet the customer’s needs.
In Box 3, I’ll show you how to explore the key tasks required to achieve this goal.
When the customer wants a personalized trip, our travel agent must be able to:
Select Destinations: Identify destinations that match the customer’s preferences and interests.
Add Activities: Include specific activities, such as museum visits, outdoor excursions, or culinary experiences, based on the customer’s preferences.
Customize the Itinerary: Organize the selected elements to create a seamless itinerary tailored to the customer’s needs.
Provide Flexible Options: Anticipate possible plan changes and offer alternatives so the customer can adjust their itinerary during the trip.
These tasks are crucial to ensuring that the trip aligns perfectly with the customer’s expectations and creates a memorable experience.
Lean JX Canvas – Box 4: Pain Points
Now that you’ve identified the key tasks in Box 3 for creating a custom travel itinerary, it’s time to explore pain points. These are the obstacles, challenges, and sources of frustration that could hinder the process.
In the context of our travel agent at “Adventure Fiasco,” here are some possible pain points:
Complexity of Options: Choosing from a wide range of destinations, activities, and excursions can be overwhelming. This could make it challenging to select the best options.
Managing Changes: Customers may have last-minute requests or change their minds during the trip. Adapting the itinerary accordingly could be a challenge.
Limited Information: The travel agent needs access to comprehensive and up-to-date information about destinations and activities to make informed decisions.
Customer Communication: Constant communication with the customer to gather information and feedback can be time-consuming.
Reservations and Availability: Ensuring availability for activity and accommodation reservations can be complicated.
Lean JX Canvas – Box 5: Current Solutions
Now that you’ve identified the pain points in Box 4 for creating a custom travel itinerary, let’s explore “current solutions” that our travel agent at “Adventure Fiasco” uses to overcome these obstacles.
Complexity of Options: Currently, our agent can rely on a database of destinations, activities, and excursions, but they have to sift through endless lists to find the best options.
Managing Changes: In case of itinerary changes, our agent must juggle between emails, phone calls, and text messages to coordinate changes with the customer.
Limited Information: The agent relies on various sources, such as printed guides, travel websites, and blogs, to obtain information about destinations.
Customer Communication: Email and phone exchanges are common for discussing customer preferences and gathering feedback.
Reservations and Availability: Reservations are managed manually, checking availability directly with service providers.
Now, the exciting part begins!
Lean JX Canvas – Box 6: Improvement Opportunities
Welcome to the creative thinking zone! Now that you’ve identified the issues in custom travel planning at “Adventure Fiasco,” it’s time to explore improvement opportunities for each pain point.
Complexity of Options: You can consider creating an intelligent search engine that suggests destinations, activities, and excursions based on the customer’s preferences. Adding customizable filters would simplify selection.
Managing Changes: A centralized online platform would allow the travel agent and the customer to collaborate in real-time on the itinerary. Instant updates would prevent confusion.
Limited Information: An integrated system providing up-to-date information about destinations, with customer reviews and recommendations, would help the agent provide better advice.
Customer Communication: An integrated instant messaging feature in the application would simplify communication between the agent and the customer, enabling smooth and continuous communication.
Reservations and Availability: An automated booking tool, synchronized with service providers, would allow real-time availability checks and quick booking confirmations.
The Lean JX Canvas guides you to transform these ideas into practical solutions.
Lean JX Canvas – Box 7: Bold Idea
It’s time to think outside the box! Here, in Box 7, let your imagination run wild to explore bold ideas that will revolutionize the custom travel booking process at “Adventure Fiasco.” Get ready, because this will shake things up!
Virtual Travel Assistant: What if each customer had their own virtual assistant that used AI to personalize the itinerary in real-time based on the traveler’s preferences and moods?
Immersive Virtual Reality: Offer a pre-departure virtual travel experience. The customer can explore their potential destination through VR goggles and customize their trip accordingly.
Collaborative Platform: Create a platform where customers with similar interests can connect and design group trips while enjoying group discounts.
Friendly Chatbots: Integrate friendly chatbots to facilitate conversation between the agent and the customer, adding a social aspect to the booking experience.
Travel Social Network: Transform “Adventure Fiasco” into a community of travelers where customers can share their adventures and inspire other travelers.
Predictive Analysis: Use data analysis to anticipate customer needs and suggest additions to their itinerary even before they ask.
These are just some of our bold ideas for the future of personalized travel.
The Crucial Decision: Improvements vs. Bold Ideas
So, are you ready to move on to the next step in creating your product or service? You’ve already filled out your Lean JX Canvas, and you’re faced with a tough choice: prioritize improvements or dive into a bold idea?
It may seem like a mountain to climb, but I’ll give you some keys to help you make the best decision with confidence.
Expected Impact: First, look at what each of these options could bring to the table. Improvements aim to make the existing better, while bold ideas can change everything in an instant.
Feasibility: Ask yourself, “Is it doable?” Improvements are often easier to implement, while bold ideas may require more time and resources.
User Needs: Never forget who you’re doing all this for. Improvements can address known needs, while bold ideas can anticipate future needs.
Overall Strategy: Think about your long-term vision. Some bold ideas could be steps toward that bright future, while improvements are more short-term focused.
Available Resources: Work with what you have. Improvements may require fewer resources, while bold ideas could require a more significant investment.
Ultimately, it’s not a “either-or” choice. You can even combine both. Start with improvements to quickly address identified problems in batch 1, then see how a bold idea could revolutionize your product or service in the longer term in batch 2.
Your choice depends on your specific context. The key is to make it with full awareness.
Lean JX Canvas – Box 8: Success Metrics
When you’re exploring innovative ideas to reinvent the “Adventure Fiasco” travel booking application, it’s essential to define clear success metrics. In this box, don’t just dream, take action by defining what will determine whether your bold ideas are successful.
Improved Conversion Rate: Measure the percentage of website visitors or app users who actually proceed to make a booking. If your ideas work, this rate should increase.
Customer Satisfaction Rate: Regularly gather customer feedback to assess their level of satisfaction. Satisfied customers are more likely to become loyal customers.
Adoption Rate of Innovative Features: Keep a close eye on the adoption of new bold features you’ve introduced. If they’re widely used, that’s a positive sign.
Referral Rate: Measure how many customers recommend “Adventure Fiasco” to friends and family. Satisfied customers are your best ambassadors.
Retention Rate: Analyze how many customers come back to book again after their first experience. High retention is an indicator of your service’s quality.
Error Reduction: If your bold ideas automate processes, monitor the reduction in human errors. Fewer errors mean less frustration for customers.
Average Booking Time: Efficiency is crucial. If your ideas enable customers to book more quickly, that can be a success.
Productivity Gains: If the bold ideas enable your travel agents to work more efficiently, measure productivity gains.
Lean JX Canvas – Box 9: Action Plan
It’s time for strategy. How will you implement your bold ideas? This box helps you develop a concrete action plan to move these ideas from the concept phase to reality.
Step 1: Design and Development: Start by creating a detailed design of your ideas. Then, engage a development team to implement them. This could include developers, designers, and other relevant experts.
Step 2: Pilot Testing: Before rolling out your ideas widely, conduct pilot tests. Choose a small group of customers or travel agents to gather feedback and address potential issues.
Step 3: Training: Ensure that your travel agents are trained to use the new features or processes. Solid training ensures successful adoption.
Step 4: Launch: When you’re ready, launch your bold ideas. Announce them to your customers and closely monitor their reactions.
Step 5: Ongoing Evaluation: After the launch, continue to collect data and feedback. Adjust your ideas as needed to improve them.
Step 6: Evolution and Improvement: After the launch, continue to monitor the progress of your bold ideas. Gather data on their performance, listen to user feedback, and be ready to make improvements.
Step 7: Special Events: Don’t forget about special events. For example, if you’ve introduced immersive virtual reality, organize a special event where customers can experience a virtual travel adventure.
Step 8: Ongoing Communication: Maintain open communication with your users. Keep them informed about updates, improvements, and events.
Step 9: Measurement of Results: Go back to the success metrics you defined in Step 8. Are they being met? What results are you seeing compared to your objectives?
Step 10: Iteration: Finally, the Lean JX Canvas is an ongoing process. Once you’ve completed one iteration, go back to Step 1 and start the process again to identify new areas for improvement.
And there you have it!
Let’s conclude our Jobs Exploration with the Lean JX Canvas!
Together, we’ve gone through each box of the Lean JX Canvas to reinvent “Aventure Fiasco’s” travel booking application. In the end, you’ve noted, discussed, explored, created, measured, and experimented for each Job To Be Done. The result? A clear vision of what you’re going to achieve!
And what about Experimentation? It’s our compass towards continuous innovation. By testing, learning, and adjusting, we ensure that our product evolves based on the real needs of our users.
So, what are you going to do now with everything we’ve discovered? Well, you’re ready to kick off your Product Backlog with your Product Owner thanks to all the work done in the Lean JX Canvas. Each Job To Be Done we’ve identified in the Lean JX Canvas turns into an Epic, representing a major feature or goal of the application.
Then, the key tasks we identified in Box 3 of the Lean JX Canvas become Job Stories. Each of these Job Stories represents an essential action needed to accomplish a Job To Be Done.
As for the obstacles and points of friction we identified in Box 4, they turn into User Stories in our Product Backlog. These User Stories correspond to the challenges we need to overcome to improve the user experience.
Throughout the process, Job Stories and User Stories can be broken down into Tasks, the concrete elements needed to accomplish them. So, thanks to our work with the Lean JX Canvas, we’ve mapped out a clear roadmap for the development of our application, aligning each step with the real needs of our users.
The Lean JX Canvas becomes the solid foundation of your project. And let’s not forget Dual Track Agile! The experiments we’ve conducted are paths to explore in your “discovery” phase, paths to prototype… and develop!
May the Scrum be with UX!