Seeing Red: How Simple Visualization Unlocked a Key Insight
Several years ago, I was invited by a team at L’Université de Montréal to lead a journey mapping project. Their aim: to better understand the journey of prospective international graduate students. I was eager to bring to that team the techniques we’d developed for mapping the prospective student journey.
The Backstory
A little further back in time, the University at Buffalo had chosen mStoner, the company I co-founded with the legendary Michael Stoner, to work with them on a mental models project using Indi Young’s research methodology. It was an ambitious undertaking. The goal was to better understand several key constituents: prospective students, prospective healthcare patients, prospective research partners, and financial supporters. Over the course of several months, we interviewed members of each audience, dissected those conversations in exacting detail, and formed mental models that stretched across the walls of conference rooms.
It was glorious. It was also too much detail for most people to refer to on a daily basis. I loved the approach, but I needed a way to shorthand the data. Enter, journey mapping.
The Landscape
At the time, journey mapping wasn’t new. Starbucks had used it to document the process of buying a cup of coffee. I wanted to see how we could apply the technique to the complex lifecycle of higher education.
In the Buffalo project, I learned that regardless of the student type, every journey followed four phases:
Understand and Explore
Narrow Choices and Apply
Decide and Accept
Commit and Transition
The journey phases remain constant, but the actions, thoughts, and feelings vary wildly. A traditional undergraduate might complete the journey in nine months; a community college student might spend a decade in the "Understand and Explore" phase alone.
We developed a simple visualization approach to chronicle these journeys and applied it to our web work. The premise was simple: to build a user-centered website, you must build empathy—a deep appreciation for the audiences you serve.
The Process
Working in Montréal for a week was a thrill. The team was enthusiastic, welcoming, and accommodating (I didn’t speak a lick of French at the time, but I’ve since remedied that). Over five intense days, we parsed transcripts of interviews with international students. We covered a wall with post-it notes—each representing a single thought, feeling, or action. We grouped them, identified patterns, and I began to illustrate the journeys as a map.
The AHA Moment
We learned several things about international students:
Many used social media as their primary research method, trusting peers from their own country over admissions counselors.
Graduate students often had rich backstories driving their pursuit of advanced degrees.
Some had never seen snow and lacked the concept of a winter coat.
The biggest "AHA" moment came when I sought a visual way to represent emotions. Feelings spanned the gamut: excitement, euphoria, confusion, and despondency. To do them justice, I decided to color-code the emotions with simple dots: Blue for positive, Red for negatively charged. I scaled the size of the dots based on the preponderance of those emotions at any given point.
The pattern became clear. In the "Decide and Accept" phase—the moment a student receives their acceptance letter—we found a chronic thread of anxiety and fear that extended through the end of the fourth phase.
I had assumed this would be the happiest time in a student’s life. But I hadn't accounted for the sheer weight of the "post-acceptance" reality:
Applying for a student visa.
Securing and proving a funding source.
Breaking a lease and finding housing in a new country.
Ending significant personal relationships.
Some students didn't know until two days before the term began if they could actually attend. This insight allowed the project team to identify better ways to support the journey, moving from "transactional" communication to "empathetic" support.
The Question
Where are you assuming celebration when your audiences are experiencing friction?