 All right, I guess it's one we can get started Good afternoon everyone and Thanks for being here last day of the summer yay So much to digest right like it just awesome sessions back to back so I'm gonna try and keep this as fast as possible and I would love for us to kind of have a dialogue towards the end because as much as I'm gonna be presenting this I'm just gonna be presenting really an idea a mindset and Something that we have been working on back at the state of Georgia with our state agencies So just curious here Out of the audience just a quick raise of hands like who all you are from Like a large organization when I sell our organization about like more than 200 people Okay, cool, and then anything under that I guess the rest of you and like startups and Yeah, so a good mix So this is great so majority seems like they're from larger organizations and and that's where you know I'd really see the potential for a digital ecosystem mindset and This is truly from My observation in the last few years working with other organizations and How this will benefit them and as we are making this change internally within our own organization We are really hopeful about the next steps and what comes after this so I really want to talk about the ecosystem mindset and we already know and already have heard so much about the Omni-channel experience that We are looking at from a digital services delivery perspective So a quick introduction, I'm the kill dish pond. I am the director for Georgia governor active. It's a digital services office within the state of Georgia and we work with state agencies elected officials or End user as you know, most of you will call a customer We call it a constituent as any Georgian or any person any citizen who is interested in information or Services from the state of Georgia I'll be happy also to have a conversation with you on Twitter I'm on Twitter or on LinkedIn at that hashtag. So if you are Here through the whole talk We can talk after the session or if this is a video someone's watching Feel free to kind of ping me at my hashtag on on Twitter at the handle All right, so let's jump into this So I want to talk about digital ecosystems. I'm going to talk about the ecosystem experience How do we cultivate a system and what are the elements of a system? So just a quick Down memory lane question Who had an mp3 player? Right So this is this is something that I own back then it was a sensor by Sandusk Excellent sound I had an option to add memory. It also played video Amazing right and also something that I could afford and Then came zoom by Microsoft. I looked at it. I'm like oh Microsoft's entering the market Maybe they have something better. It really wasn't anything different than what I already had. It was more expensive So I'm like, I'm just gonna stick to what I have But then something happened This came along Now if you just do like a tech review Honestly, the first gen iPod Was an inferior piece of technology compared to what? Zooms and the Sandusks already had in the market. They did not have an Option for me to add more memory. So I was kind of limited with my mp3 songs and Also They had one more step for me to deal with the device It came with something that I had to install on my computer and Manage my songs So clearly if you just kind of charted out It's so easy to use a Sandusk or keep using the Sandusk versus just changing my mindset To this clearly way more steps in world But this was the defining moment for a company like Apple that literally made them From a technology company to a music company. I mean literally they sold two billions songs when they started selling singles on iTunes and This is where they started capturing the market where people like me who had the Sandusks or the zooms They were like, no, I want an iPad. I want an iPod. Why? Because now suddenly I have a system where I can see my Compilations I can manage lists. It's an experience that was extended way beyond that one device and not only it was just Contained to that. It was also an amazing product design, right? I mean before iPods. We never had white headphones It almost became a cultural Shift, right? I mean anyone stick in their headphones white headphones in their pocket. Maybe it was going in a zoo Who knows? Right, it was like awesome, man. He has an Apple product I mean people actually came up and asked like hey, can I see that iPod? All right, if I had asked someone, hey, do you want to see my Sandusk? No Apple made that happen and back then what I didn't realize was actually this was like a beginning of an ecosystem that they were creating because they pretty much had This effect on all of the devices that they pretty much entered the market with Every device that they introduced like literally disrupted the existing market That they were trying to make a presence in and as the device line grew They were also very conscious about why these devices are gonna be owned by people And how can I keep making things better? They didn't just stop at iTunes they didn't just stop at any of the other products then they gave us a Commonplace a consolidated repository for hosting everything, right? All right disclaimer I don't work for Apple, but I Am a big fanboy as most of us are and just understanding and reverse engineering the thought process, right? And again, what really amazed me was after owning their products And the experience Just doesn't stop there. It keeps going on right so as technology is technology something breaks In our previous world what happens when something broke, right? I mean, I literally had to take my computer to Best Buy or Geek Squad unless I had like a multi-year maintenance plan from Dell or someone else whoever I bought my computer from But Apple literally offered me a very easy way to just say, you know, I'd go and book a spot at our genius bar and Come talk to us. Let us look at your device Literally the experience was like okay, and now I'm not that worried that something's broken with my device Someone is gonna help me with it When I walk in when they're looking at my device guess what I'm doing I'm walking around looking at their new products Because it's all contained within a store So maybe if my device not that broken or maybe it's like you know, it's time for a new device I already have something on my mind It's a genius of an ecosystem Because today's customer experience is so much more dynamic and connected than ever before that individual Transactions with organizations are really no longer discreet or isolated they really have to be connected from an organizational perspective and When all of these experiences are strung together you start realizing the benefit of an ecosystem But when we think about an ecosystem just going back to maybe our high school days, right? I mean we just think of this serene landscape or Something that just kind of takes care of itself and that's exactly the point of it as a customer It just should feel very organic. It should just feel very automated But truly if you were to kind of start peeling the onion you will see that it's not that Every element is defined every element has a voice every element has a need a value and dependency so the ecosystem mindset right the Definition of an ecosystem is a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment Obviously it comes from ecology, but as you can see there are three core elements of The definition it's community Interacting and environment So let's talk about community Obviously when we talk about community, it's a key element of an ecosystem. It contains people just like any other community But from an ecosystem perspective a community is not just the end user. It's not just the customer a Community contains everybody who is involved in that ecosystem and that means everyone has their own goals and Expectations as part of that ecosystem. So literally the community can be broken into two major groups internal and external community So the internal community which pretty much is most of our organizations, which we are a key part of the ecosystem Pretty much leadership management and employees right and the people with the vision and the purse strings The implementers and the people like us who are like in the trenches making this happen So for a leadership right, I mean they have to make sure that everything aligns to their organizational goals Which then gets transferred into To their managers who have their section goals and then employees have their individual goals So if we were to say like any business need that aligns with strategic priorities Basically increasing revenue increase new business expand existing business and increase stakeholder value You take any vertical today and you can apply this Strategic priority regardless of you know, you are a business or an education institution or even government All of them have this green arrow next to these Words and this one the red arrow next to a cost everyone obviously wants to drive down their costs and Then the next key element is the external community, which is the customers and This is where a lot of the organizations and Speaking from experience when I talked to some of our agencies They think they understand their customers But they're not sure because they maybe go by some anecdotal information or just go by pure Data that they collect on websites and that just not enough by itself Understanding human needs designing for people is key and that's why before we design for people we need to understand people We need to understand our customers because successful citizen or customer interactions Only results into wider acceptance of your product or your services so one of the key ways of doing that is Create personas and most of you might have been in a exercise or have seen personas created for your organization But this really should be an ongoing effort in knowing your customers knowing your end users because by creating personas we target specific customers we target essential groups by Understanding their differences and also understanding the similarities so accordingly we can decide which products which services we should be offering There's a big aspect of quantitative data as well. Like I said your analytics might be feeding you a lot of information So it's really important to kind of know this actor but the key part in creating a digital ecosystem is a customer journey a Customer journey literally is a visual map of the process that your persona Goes through in order to accomplish their goal And unless we know what this customer journey is as an organization We really can make over annual goals and we cannot really make our product offerings and features final Because then we are just designing for ourselves It's a narrative. It's a narrative that is condensed into a visual But it's really helpful because when you get insider stakeholders Look at it. It's like a one-point Realization that oh, wow, this is exactly what the customer how they interact with what they're looking for So how can we make our organization better? so this is a quick three element story of a Persona a Scenario and a goal that actually make a customer journey Because visual storyboarding of a persona reaching their goal It really kind of relies on the whole story telling aspect and also visualization aspect Because what this should tell us is hey, this is our persona. This is our user group These are their goals and this is how they go about achieving their goals. So literally your Customer journey should start from okay. How does my persona go from point a to point B? What that does it it actually? wraps context around your customer journey Because fragmented understanding of anything is quite chronic to any organization and unless we have this shared vision We are just not able to map exactly how someone interacts with the organization Just like I said earlier there could be managers Managing multiple silos and if each of them is just focused on what they are doing and not understanding What the other silo is doing that is where you cannot get major gaps So here's a template or here's a structure as I would say Where you can actually map your customer journey because it creates a holistic view of your customer experience and This is the process like literally of bringing together the Visualizing disparate data points of what is it that your customers are doing right? So if you go through the stages up there and these could be different for your organization This is what makes sense for us My individual organization because we are the technology arm within the state of Georgia And when we work with other state agencies or elected officials We take them through this process to use our services So we have a discovery design build migration and then launch and then literally after launch and then we go into process of supporting them But for this particular focus a customer journey really helps because then once we have the stages defined You can have all the steps of what happens within that stage Then you have a touch point identified a touch point literally represents a specific Interaction between a customer in your organization so that it could include devices that could include channels It could be any specific task Right, but this is made the customer journey is really made up by cities of these touch points and steps But then also what I really like about this it also lists out all your departments within the organization that are responsible and They have skin in the game So when someone from a leadership looks at this they'll be like oh wait my department or all these departments play a big part in This particular stage of a customer journey So if we kind of have to break it down the stages steps and touch points really define the experience and Then you have the next step, which is ownership based on that experience How do we know who is responsible to make that experience better? this is where ownership comes in and these departments immediately are Visually up on the wall saying, okay. Why is the experience low? Where your department has the piece of ownership in there? so this is a this is an example of our customer journey completed for one of our agencies Towards the end of the presentation like literally on the last slide I have a link to all the resources that I will be showing you right from personas to customer journeys So feel free to just kind of you know, it's a bitly link So just go and you know grab all the resources happy to share that if you have a better Solution to any other resources to make them better. I'll be more than happy to have a conversation so customer journey really kind of is the premise of deciding how your organization needs to respond to the whole mindset of a digital Ecosystem so the key aspects what? Customer journey does is it really kind of creates that shift in perspective in the organization Like how many of you can say your organization is really inside out here? basically that what that means is We know what we are and we want our customers to learn what we are right and then What customer journey really does is it makes our organization outside in like Typically customers don't care which department deals with what right? They have a problem and they want it answered So it really kind of helps with the shift in perspective It also shares like an organization wide vision Breaking down those silos Like I said the internal ownership is a big key here So people know exactly what's on fire and who can help and Then also it helps with identifying gaps between channels because clearly interactions happen across channels and when that happens if Two channels seem disconnected that is essentially where you can say well, you know what we can bridge that So breaking down silos and creating one shared organization-wide vision and ownership of key ownerships Is really key and that translates to a better channel experience? so let's look at then you know the next element which is interaction because a Journey means nothing if you don't work on how you interact with your customers, right? And when it comes to interaction, we really need to understand what people understand as far as content is concerned because it's Essentially content that everyone interacts regardless of the channel that they go to Maybe a website or a mobile app or they chat with someone They are asking questions and they are understanding answers and that conversation relies on key elements Key terms which they need to understand and someone has to actually create them But this is where the break happens there are so many content producers smeared across organizations where There is no cohesive message, right? So this is this is a quick test that Don Norman has implemented in some of his Exercises so this is as we know salt and pepper Dispenser I just want to ask the room which one of you all think The one on the right is salt Which enough you think the one on the left is salt? Yeah, so about a 60 40 divide, right? The answer is it depends It really depends what the person who is really refilling these with salt and pepper of things Right if that person thinks the right one is salt, they are gonna fill that up with salt And this is exactly what happens with a lot of organizations is if they don't have a marching order Or if they don't have a way to go back and check what they're supposed to do Or they're supposed to say They might just end up saying something which is now addition to the existing knowledge base, right? And this is how versions happen and they are created So the key element here is that it all needs to come from one source If there is a theme across this conference that we have heard is is all about headless and decoupled experiences and and the reason why I guess, you know I'm speaking at this conference is because Drupal is like a classic Solution which enables this mindset. So the single source of truth is essentially, you know, what? Organizations should aspire to for having that consistency if all of your information comes from one place regardless of the channel that is distributed against You can be sure that you can maintain that level of Consistency in your communication that that really drives down the confusion. It drives down Support calls it drives down your tickets. Essentially, it drives down your cost to maintain Also, you created once and you can just implement it everywhere and PR has been doing it for a long time And this is when content becomes really important and not just creating content and dumping it into one place One common repository is important, but also identifying. What is this content? What are the pieces and parts of the content and this is where structural content makes a big difference? It literally means that content is separated into independent parts and it is tagged Because this having a structural piece of content makes behavior more predictable and you can then Respond to whatever the query is and this is basically going back to labeling everything, right? We are not structured content. It was not new. I'm guessing all of us have recently Done our taxes Right, so some of these forms like the w2s is one of the very early examples of structured content Every piece of content has its own place has its own location and Because the structure is created It's a lot easier to process it further on at one point all of our taxes were all automated Even the simple ones or the complicated ones not automated manual But now all the simple taxes There is no reason for someone to manually put them into the next piece of structure, right? And that's exactly what someone like turbo tax identified and they came up with this piece of Genius and this is where my videos want to fail me We get the idea, right? Just takes a photo and identifies exactly what needs to go to the next place It's supposed to go. How does that do that if the content was not structured in the first place? Having structured content really helps with applications like these But for that as part of the ecosystem the last but also The next most important piece is also the environment, right? Because we need to then plot out exactly what we need to have in Order to kind of take that structured information and serve it further on So at one point our environment pretty much consisted of a website that could be just delivered on say a desktop a tablet or a laptop and then late on the phones and With responsive design it was easier where it just kind of structurally changes but now we just cannot control right because there are so many different devices that are coming up and One of the good things about having structural content is now through API eyes. You can reach other Channels you can reach touch screens You can reach like we can't even think of every channel that now an organization is thinking to create that experience for us right now I don't know if we should be doing this while we are driving but now we have the facility of Accessing the web in a work car if you own a Tesla, you know exactly what this is and you know It's a challenge for us Like how does our content appear on these screens right from a screen this size to a small watch To something that doesn't even have a screen a Conversational interface really kind of just relies on the content itself and understanding the keywords to Give you the needed answer without the ability to show you anything We need to plan for all of this to kind of make sure that all these independent parts are open which are Labeled as fields really then are focused on the channel delivery So imagine just kind of you creating one piece of content and then within that pieces you identify What needs to be conveyed through a conversational device was it was needs to be conveyed on maybe you know screens What is what could be tweeted out? At that point if that happens It's a lot easier for someone to rely on any channel and any device Basically to have the same piece of information relate to them But for that you know as an organization we need to make a list of what are going to be all our channels Devices are not channels a lot of a lot of the conversations are being in where you know people when they hear about the Omni channel experience they come to us and they start talking about devices devices are really not channels Devices simply just provide the means right to access channels And as you can see across channels or across devices you can leverage multiple channels So for example a mobile phone can actually give you a Mobile app experience a website social media email SMS telephone or even like a live webcast So through all these channels just using one device right so The common misconception is that the computing devices are reliant on Channel strategy no you need to have a channel strategy and then you just need to kind of make sure that those channels are supported by these devices And again now this will happen unless you have that single source of truth So to kind of wrap this up The whole ecosystem that you're going to be planning on creating for your organization really depends on First understanding how you can get your organization ready Because when someone like if you have internal implementers or you get an external implementer to implement say an Omni channel approach of delivery to your customers It can only work so much If your organization is not prepared, but if your organization is prepared to kind of adopt to the Omni channel experience By just having the right conversations including all the key stakeholders It is going to be way more successful and and it should be you know a lot easier implementation so just a quick takeaways right so Design for your customers not for your organizations, right and Map your organization goals to the customer journey. Just take a look at your digital ecosystem like what Channels do you support at this point across which devices ask yourself is these are the most important gaps? That did you need to feel right now to have like a consistent channel solution and then Be device agnostic really like let's not thinking about okay This is what we want to do because this is how we want to be seen on this the message needs to be the first thing and This this happens by just studying these touch points right because these are the common customer journeys where we understand the context of interaction and and But the biggest I guess pieces keep your content just simple and structured because regardless of your delivery regardless of your devices Regardless of your channel if your content is really simple to understand and it's structured I think that is the key in your success and the success of your organization Thank you again feel free to reach out to me on On Twitter, but I'll be more than happy to have a Conversation if you have any questions or you know just come seek me after the session Cool. Thank you all Any kill hey That was great. Thank you Billy Hilton stated with Carolina So I'm curious a little bit about the you know content seems to be the heart of the digital ecosystem Vision you shared what about I'm trying to better understand like applications and more task-based Experiences so as digital services director and in Georgia. I imagine there are you know huge applications maybe ERPs things like that that are you know, they're digital experiences. They're typically closed and difficult to align to you know some of the Devices and interaction points you share, but how does how do they fit in a digital ecosystem? How do we? things that aren't so content-based, but are more task-based and Typically larger applications. Sure. Yeah, it does. No, actually, it's a really good question The so we did a Survey a few years ago and We asked constituents like what are they looking for when they interact with us and 60% said they were looking for Applications and 40% said they were just looking for information But as we kind of dug deeper we realized that even though they were looking for applications like very few of them actually went through the whole transaction process But they essentially were looking for information So there's a lot of information that comes with that transactional Application ERP or any other key application. So, you know, the communication is pretty key up there But also on a customer journey You can still map that because that is a touch point if someone uses a phone to use your application That is a touch point and then you can take it further to see How they use it and what are the gaps there? Right exactly That could have its own customer journey like where do people call? Where do they actually use the application to the new license or sometimes they could just walk in the store and renew their license? Hi, I'm great great talk. My name is Megan Davis. I'm with the mass doc every design And I'm wondering in the public sector. How do you navigate when your? Organization goals are not aligned with your customer journey and I'm guessing when you say customer journey is you're referring to Constituents. Yes. So how do you navigate that challenge when an organization's goals are not aligned with a constituent's journey? That's a great question, but a really hard question. It's I wish I had a silver bullet for that, but I think a really good visual of a customer journey and a Visual that is accompanied by a good explanation Helps Because having conversations with stakeholders again taking them back aligning to what the initial Goals were right like I said the strategic goals, which is like driving Business up or reducing cost or increasing existing so even at a say public sector for example food stamps Right. I mean the whole idea is federal funds fund that program and then we have to make sure that many people sign up for it So they have to be some key Success indicators for that and then if we just drive those back to the customer journey saying this is where the problems are You know, they have a better way of understanding than what should be done within their organization Thanks for the interesting presentation I'm Eric from I had a question though and the first version of that journey customer journey chart All made sense to me then you had another version that had like a graph with some happy faces and sad faces Yes, and I was wondering where you got that data to sort of show how different areas were performing better or worse Yes Good. Yes. Thank you so this is The actual implementation of the template that you know, I have shared from that link Everything else is the same But yes Eric as you as you pointed out that is actually a graph that plotted an existing customer experience Because we went through this process. We were able to kind of say, okay, this is where they really were not that happy Because maybe in our conversations, they were just not getting what they wanted because we wanted we were just going back and asking questions about like, why is it that you want rather than what is it that you want and Once we had that moment of clarity and then we moved into the next step it went up so Then that interest peaked Then the evaluation obviously they were you know really kind of in a different mindset and when the decision came down to again, they were not that thrilled because there was a Cost factor associated with the service that they were looking for so the reason to plotting that is Like we just need to be aware of future customer interactions based on some of the past journeys of at that point We this is possibly what's going to happen with our interaction that they are going to be just cautious So we should be Prepared to deal with that particular so the dot going up or down. Yeah, it's just a visual representation And honestly, I mean this is something for our team To look at because all of us then understand this is what happened with one particular customer I'm gonna jump to the last slide again feel free to Use that bitly link we have a bunch of Resources out there customer journey maps. We have resources for personas. We have resources for empathy maps There are a lot of UX based resources. There are also a lot of accessibility resources so feel free to grab those and Use them Go ahead. I have another question. That's all right. Um, is regarding the structured content How are you like creating the buy-in in the public sector for writing in a structured way? That's the challenge. I know we're having on mass.gov and trying to convey so yeah insights. Yeah We kind of when we implemented our content management system the the Drupal platform Like Kendra here who is our director product like her team implemented like most of the content types by giving all of the structure and having agencies Use that like we go through a lot of training so that the agencies can actually start using those content types to have a structured Content, but it only kind of you know help so much a lot of them we'll still just use like one site page and just jump everything in it and At that point like if we have to for example, we say hey everyone use Locations and locations has its own structure. So at any point we can just aggregate all the locations to okay If you're in this physical location These are all the state offices around you or services around you unless they put that in there It's not gonna happen But yeah, it's it's a matter of just constant, you know communication with them and you know Train them to kind of just use them from day one. So hopefully we hope that did that's what they know and Sort of turn a hack it around But I'm sure Kendra will have some other ideas so we can regroup after After the top. All right, if not anymore, I will wrap. Thank you again. Thank you. I appreciate you sitting through