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We have torn apart our Journey map and put it back together again. Trying to determine what is the top priority is so hard because everything is so damn important. We have zoomed in to materials to redevelop them, zoomed out to look at what the role each platform or tool will play and finally zoomed back in again to work step by step through each interaction so that each material and platform is working together properly.
It’s been like a video game where you have to spend a level jumping from stone to stone to cross a treacherous river. Balancing on one rock not knowing if the next one you are going to hop to will start sinking as soon as you dedicate your full weight to it. Sometimes my feet get wet but luckily I’m getting across with everyone else.
During our first phase of prototyping we were constantly trying new things and making changes as we worked. It was incessant, exciting, often frustrating but forced creativity, ingenuity and recklessness. We would rush to complete a touchpoint or material and print it as we were flying out the door to use it. We learned so much, even when I felt like I was moving so fast I couldn’t always see what was being learned.
We have swung back to the other end of the spectrum where we have committed 3 months to make everything as complete as possible, producing systems that induct new hosts and kudoers that will be ready when they launch and not have to be prefaced with ‘this is a work in progress’. We will continue to test and learn but we will have more to offer and more to support.
We’ve been pacing along faithfully towards November by tearing apart each details of what goes on in Kudoz. What we’ve done alarmingly little of is user testing. Before, I just wanted to slow down. I wanted to use something that hadn’t flown out the door, hot off the press without quick edits or amendments. I’ve used materials with spelling and grammatical errors that I sometimes felt distracted from their loving creativity and intentional purpose.
Now I am surrounded by incomplete and occasionally incoherent scraps of paper that is one day going to be a piece of on-boarding material or a webpage and I find myself missing all the lovely hosts, kudoers and families that I’ve built relationships with since February. It’s starting to make me feel really uncomfortable. I want some fresh eyes to look over my shoulder and make a suggestion because I know we’re pouring as much as we can into this but I will always learn something new stepping out of the office and into someone’s living room or storefront. We, as a team are constantly questioning each other, scribbling notes, interjecting, coming up with alternatives and suggestions or even just talking through something that’s just not clear to us yet.
What I crave is for Rick, Janet, Cassandra, Ben, Jessica or Monique to tell me that I’m doing something wrong or what we have finally got right. What do they still want to see, what have we missed and what have hit the mark on. These notes and ideas on paper aren’t ready for them yet but my itchy fingers can’t wait to have a fresh pile of yellow booklets to show up on their doorstep with.
In order to keep in touch we’ve continued to run Reflection Café. We’ve had people come and check it out and I feel like it’s really going somewhere. It’s an interesting parallel because I need to make sure that we use this time to reflect also. I need to recall and learn from all the things we did and tried from February to July.
I know that by the end of the year we are going to have something amazing. I know it is still not going to be perfect and there will always be improvements to be made but that’s because part of this is that we are never going to stop learning. What it does mean is that we will have made something that we have not built just for ourselves, it came from thoughts and suggestions of people that devoted time and creativity to us during the demanding six months we were growing Kudoz.