Experience Strategy Method Cards

Uncover insights and opportunities for your business

Our Philosophy

Cantina has distilled its human-centered design process into a set of methods we’ve found to be particularly useful.

By applying these methods, you’ll gain a better understanding of your customers, see ways to align your organization with a defined experience strategy, and identify opportunities for customer-centered growth and differentiation.

Look In

Build an understanding of the organization and industry to serve as a foundation and starting point of the project.

Look Out

Learn about your target users and gain an understanding of their motiviations, behaviors, attitudes and needs in order to design something that is right for them.

Expand

Go big and broad, build out your team, explore a multitude of possible solutions and directions.

Focus

Start to narrow and refine your direction. Who are you designing for? What role does your brand or organization play in their process? What are the key opportunities?

Look Forward

Transitioning from “what is” to “what could be”. Setting the design direction and providing the creative team the tools they need for success.

Stakeholder Interviews

Organizations consist of a mix of people and perspectives. Talking to people creates a foundation to build your research plan and design approach. View Card

Secondary Research

Learn from others who have come before you. Discover and consume as much existing knowledge as you can to construct the right foundation. View Card

Assumptions Map

Great experiences exists at the intersection of desirable, feasible, & viable. Use this exercise to find assumptions, and set up successful testing. View Card

Ethnographic Research

There's no better way to understand target users than to talk to them directly. Quantitative research helps to understand the "what" "why" and "how". View Card

Observations

Observing users’ behaviors firsthand can provide insights they can’t (or won’t) express through conversations alone. View Card

Card Sort

Explaining complex mental models can be challenging. This exercise helps users express thoughts about abstract concepts in a clear way. View Card

Diary Study

Diary studies offer the opportunity to track information over time, for a more holistic view of user behaviors across varied contexts & environments. View Card

Body Storming

There’s a certain physical and emotional reaction when something “feels right.” When generating solutions, engaging your body helps open up new ideas. View Card

Participatory Design

How can you design for the things users don’t know how to tell you? Creation helps users tell stories that reveal their deep needs and wants. View Card

Customer Journey Maps

This diagram is a holistic view of actions, influences, thoughts and emotions with and surrounding interactions with your brand or organization. View Card

Personas

This framework will provide guidance to the design team in creating solutions that address the specific needs, behaviors and pain points of the user. View Card

Service Blueprints

While journey maps go wide, service blueprints go deep. Visualize and improve how people, processes, systems, & policies enable user experience. View Card

Opportunity Statements

You need to take learnings and make them actionable for design. Opportunity statements focus team’s attention, opening ideation of diverse solutions. View Card

Creative Brief

The team must aligned before transitioning from strategy into design. This is the tool to communicate opportunities and design direction pre-ideation. View Card

Storytelling

Our brains are hard-wired to process and store information in the form of stories. A clear, compelling story is essential to align and engage clients. View Card

Opportunity Workshop

The research is complete and insights formulated. An opportunity to come together and translate and prioritize learnings into design implications. View Card

Design Sprint

You never know if a design hypothesis is right until you test it. Design sprints reduce risk by rapidly generating ideas creating testable prototypes. View Card