Stakeholder Journey Maps are a fabulous tool to intimately understand what a stakeholder is trying to accomplish (their objectives and intentions) and the steps/actions/decisions that stakeholder needs to make to complete their journey. Stakeholder Journey Maps are commonly used to help designers to create the optimal user interface and nicely segue into UI storyboards and wireframes. But oh, design is so much more than just a pretty UI. What I find even more exciting – and profitable – about a stakeholder journey map is how one can use it to understand where and how to leverage big data plus advanced analytics (artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning) to create Data Products that re-invent those stakeholder journeys and transform the stakeholder experience. I think this is going to be fun!

When I was the Vice President of Advertiser Analytics at Yahoo!, I painfully learned that my targeted user personas (Media Planners & Buyers and Campaign Managers) didn't want more data in helping them optimize their marketing, campaign, and advertising spend across the Yahoo! Heck, they didn't even want analytics! The aspirations for these personas were to become VPs of Digital Marketing or Directors of Social Media Marketing or Digital Advertising Executives. The last thing they wanted was to become data analysts who had to churn through massive data sets to uncover the audience, messaging, and campaign insights needed to achieve their marketing, campaign, and advertising objectives. In fact, that's what they wanted Yahoo! to do for them!