When developing a digital solution, it's essential to humanize your approach by identifying the journey or processes you intend to impact. This ensures that your solution resonates with users and effectively addresses their needs.

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First, determine the solution or outcome you aim to achieve. Once that's clear, identify the journey or processes that will be affected by your solution. Be mindful of the various levels of processes involved. If you look closely, you’ll become more aware of the invisible stages and steps happening around us every day. Whether it’s technology or other solutions, there are processes or journeys these tools are improving, preventing, or eliminating.

Understanding the cascading impact of processes is crucial. This refers to a series of steps, both physical and digital, that a person or organization needs to follow to achieve a specific outcome. Business processes like sales acquisition, marketing, design, and operations consist of smaller, interconnected steps that influence the overall effectiveness of an organization.

To effectively learn about these processes, you must first identify the journeys or processes that will provide key insights into your solution. Ask yourself and your team: where do we think our solution lies? Once you have an answer, you can create context, empathy, and a detailed understanding of the stages and steps within these processes.

Here’s why this approach is vital:

1. Context and Empathy: By understanding the entire journey, you can empathize with users at every step, ensuring that your solution addresses real pain points and enhances the user experience (UX).
2. Detailed Understanding: Identifying the specific stages and steps allows you to pinpoint areas for improvement and innovation, ensuring that your solution is effective and efficient. This aligns with principles of Design Thinking.
3. Holistic Impact: Recognizing the cascading impact of processes helps you understand how changes in one area can affect the entire system. This ensures that your solution integrates seamlessly and positively impacts the organization as a whole, which is a cornerstone of Product Strategy.
4. Informed Decision-Making: With a thorough understanding of the journey and processes, you can make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts, resources, and time. This is crucial for effective Process Improvement and Business Strategy.

To illustrate, let’s consider a digital solution aimed at improving customer support. Start by identifying the journey – from a customer encountering an issue to the resolution. Map out every step: the customer reaching out, the support team receiving the request, the internal processes to address the issue, and finally, the resolution and feedback.

By understanding this journey, you can identify pain points such as long wait times or miscommunication. You can then design a solution that addresses these specific issues, creating a more seamless and positive experience for both customers and support staff.

In conclusion, humanizing your solution by identifying and understanding the journey and processes it will impact is crucial. It allows you to create solutions that are not only effective but also resonate deeply with users. So, take the time to map out these journeys, empathize with users, and understand the cascading impact of processes. Your solution will be all the better for it.

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