David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Steps to Mapping a Customer’s Journey

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Designing the Digital ExperienceAwhile back, I sent Valeria Maltoni (who writes the cool Conversation Agent blog) a copy of my book – Designing the Digital Experience.

She’s been reading it, and blogged about it (very awesome – thanks, Valeria)! And in the process, she has some really good pointers about mapping the customer journey (which I wrote about in Chapter 11). She came up with some steps to mapping a customer’s journey:

  1. Connect the dots between internal preparedness and external needs – overcoming internal processes and barriers that block you from giving your customer a better “journey”
  2. Integrate what you say with what you do – “How are all of the messages you’re sending out in each medium integrating with the feedback you receive in that medium, for example? What are you learning and feeding back into the process?”
  3. Innovate at each touch point – “What process or tool have you not updated for a long time and needs revisiting, for example?”

… and each point discusses the “moment of truth” found in each of those steps.

Go read the whole post – good stuff there!

Designing the Digital Experience at NEFLIN

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Last Friday, I gave two presentations at NEFLIN’s technology conference in Jacksonville, FL. The first one was Designing the Digital Experience, which is based on my book. Here’s the Slideshare version of the presentation!

Designing The Digital Experience

View more PDF documents from David King.

Seen at the Richland County Public Library

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My book seen at Richland County Public libraryTyler, from the 344pounds.com blog, was kind enough to take this snapshot of Designing the Digital Experience sitting on the shelf at the Richland County Public Library and email it to me! Here’s what Tyler said about the book:

Hey David,

I bought your book off of Amazon yesterday, but also went down to the Richland County Public library to check it out until it gets here.

Attached are the pics from that visit!

I found about you and your site a little while ago by searching for something about designing a better blog for users (can’t remember exact term).  I started a personal blog, 344pounds.com, about 3 months ago — I don’t have a huge technical background, but I’m learning as much as I can so I can make sure my blog is “good” for my customers, aka readers.

While your book is *marketed* towards designers and business owners, I think that anybody who has any type of website can benefit from the book, even a small “not for profit” personal blog like mine. Â I’ve already found quite a few things from reading your book that I can apply to my blog.

Feel free to post this on your blog or testimonials page or whatnot — I’d love to help sell the book, it’s great!

Tyler

Thanks Tyler for buying the book, taking the pics, and the kind words! You rock!

My Book was Spotted in the Wild!

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I left it this wayMy book, Designing the Digital Experience, has been spotted in the wild! Or more appropriately, I spotted it at the Barnes and Noble in Topeka, KS.

Which got me to thinking … if you ever happen to see my book in your local bookstore, please take a pic and send it to me (or send me the flickr link), and I’ll post it here – that might be fun (or it could be really embarrassing, if you can’t find the book anywhere … 🙂

And for some related book-ish news: I’ll be at Computers in Libraries next week. CIL always puts on a great conference – lots of new emerging trends and practical, “use it tomorrow” tips, all focused on libraries and info professionals. If you are one of those, you should try to get to this conference!

I’ll be speaking a time or two as well – on Tuesday, I’m talking about designing digital experiences, and on Monday night I’ll be doing a book signing at the InfoToday booth.

Make sure to stop by and say hi!

David Lee King’s Digital Experience: Interview in TK Magazine

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I Was Featured in TK MagazineI recently gave a book-related interview for a local-to-Topeka magazine, TK Magazine. People actually read it! I’ve had a number of people stop me and say they saw “my article” – that’s sorta cool. Here’s the interview:

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In the March/April 2008 issue of TK, we introduced you to the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library’s new “Digital Branch” – a library branch that exists entirely on the Web, enabling you to check out books, pick out movies and music, and just about anything you else you want to do at the main library (except you can do it all in your PJs!).

The whiz behind the development of the library’s website [aside – LOTS of very smart people built our website – definitely not just me!] is David Lee King. He has just published his first book, Designing the Digital Experience, which aims to help you create a website that offers such a positive digital experience that your visitors will not only return, but will share links to your site with all their friends, family and co-workers.

TK: What is “experience design?”

DK: Experience design is the practice of designing, well, lots of things – products, services, events, and environments – but with the customer’s experience fully in mind. A good example of experience design in action is a visit to two restaurants, McDonalds and Hard Rock Cafe. At McDonald’s, you get a sandwich, and the normal fast-food experience – rather bland (some would argue, just like the sandwich).

But when you visit the Hard Rock Cafe, the “experience” you have while at the restaurant is geared toward a theme – that of rock music. Everything, including the food and drink you order, the decor of the place, t-shirts you can buy, even the background music playing, is themed to provide you with a “rock and roll” experience that you can’t help but notice.

Hard Rock Cafe has designed an experience around rock and roll – only part of the total experience involves the actual food.

TK: How does that relate to my website?

DK: Websites are rapidly changing from electronic brochures about an organization or business to an actual destination, where real-life, real-time transactions take place. Take my bank, for instance. At my bank’s website, I can balance my checkbook, pay bills, and transfer money. I can do actual, real-world things at the website.

Organizations are starting to improve the experience their customers have while at the site in order to better serve their customers.

TK: What will our readers learn from your book?

DK: My book will quickly get you up-to-speed about what digital experience design is, and different approaches to take with your website in regards to digital experience. I also provide ideas to help jump-start your thinking about what your customers experience while at your website, and ways to help improve those experiences.

* original article online at TK Magazine, used by permission

** Photo by Bryan Nelson