Why is mapping important

Hey, welcome back for another video. And this one is all about understanding why, why mapping is so important. Now, I think if you haven't built many maps before, it's hard to maybe understand the value and the impact that they can actually bring to you. But just put yourself in the, in these shoes, real saying, I just want you to imagine this. So imagine you just started a new company and you're trying to understand how the company works. Not just the business side, not just the product side, but all the things that make it tick, all the things that make it work. Do you understand how people come into the product, how people go out of the product, how the company makes money and how the company loses money, how the teams are structured and how they're unstructured? Basically, like, how do you understand the world that is around you and that you're working in? Mapping to learn can help you do that so that you can be a little bit more informed with how you prioritize your work or how you decide to focus on one area of the product over another area of the product. So it's important to know that from a systems level, like how, how your company functions. Now, if you already have an existing workflow map or you have an existing product that you're being tasked to design a specific project, like a specific aspect or corner of the product, you still need to know how other things in the ecosystem operate, because the things that you do could be affecting the other products in the ecosystem. So this is another essential part of why mapping is important. Now we're talking about, this is more the business side, so you can be sharp and on your game as a designer. But think about this. Your team also needs that level of clarity. So if your team understands how the system works, think about how much better your entire team can operate and have way more design clarity about what's going on and what's working. So I've used workflow maps to explain big initiatives, to explain project plans, to explain how a feature works, or how to explain an onboarding experience. So all of these things can be used in a map format and it can be articulated and framed with your team so they can understand what they're about to embark on or what they're going to build or why they're going to go, why we're going to go this way, over that way. Maps can help with that. And I think the last thing that I'll say about this is I've used them so much to just get alignment from a team's perspective and just with you know, it's way more important now with my, with my work that I'm doing at Facebook because of the systems are getting so, so they're so complicated and they need to be able to talk to different things. And when I was at LinkedIn it was similar fashion. There was very hard, difficult platforms that you needed to be able to, to understand at 20,000 foot level and then down at the hundred foot level and even on the ground level. So I hope this was helpful. But I want you to think about how a map could be helpful for you. For example, like hey, are people confused about what's going on in the product? People, do people know what they need to build and why they need to build it? A map can help with that. And if you have comments, questions below, definitely put them in the comments and we'll just get to them and we'll talk, talk them out. But that's why mapping is so important. And next I want to talk about a few stories when it comes to mapping. So thanks and I'll see you in the next video.