Ecosystem Mapping

Before the Activity

Gather your design team as well as a few stakeholders and end users associated with your project. A wide array of perspectives will make sure there aren’t gaps in your final map.

On the whiteboard place a sticky note at the proposed center of your map with the name of the process/product/service that your team is designing for.

During the Activity

Ask the group to identify the ecosystem of people, systems, and processes that surround the sticky note at the map’s center. Provide the team 15 minutes to silently put all their ideas up on the board, one piece of the ecosystem per sticky.

After all the elements are up on the board, begin to organize them. Are there commonalities by campus? School? Administrative unit? Does a group of stickies fall into broader groups of people like graduate students, faculty, department administration? Group stickies together by categories and label the groups.

Now that the people, systems, and processes are identified, begin making the connections between the sticky note groups and the project sticky note at the center. Label the connecting lines to describe the relationship and, if helpful, draw arrows to show if it’s a one-way flow or a mutual exchange. Add in connections and dependencies between the groups that are relevant to the project.

Take one last look at the map as a group to determine if anything is missing.

After the Activity

Now that your team knows the ecosystem that your project is living in, keep the map in a common location for the team to reference frequently. As you move forward with research and implementing ideas, check the Ecosystem Map to ensure your solution takes into consideration the various inputs into your project and doesn’t break a process somewhere else.