The Opportunity Canvas  is used to find the truffles in the customer journey. However, it is not a classic customer journey. Lean Service Design focuses on the opportunities that result from the journey. This may sound like a semantic detail, but it is very important. Why? We tend to spend a lot of time and money to create extensive customer journeys, trying to capture every little detail. The result is a far too complex journey that no one can apply in everyday life, not to mention that no innovation potential can be identified.

Our approach is to focus on the essential aspects of the customer journey and always pay attention to the opportunities it offers. Which moments of truth in the customers’ perception do we find? These truly decisive moments in the customer journey contain the real innovation potential that can make the difference. Therefore we have to understand what is going on cognitively and emotionally in the customer’s mind to get to this point. To do this, we introduce the concept of the Inner Dialogue, in which we capture the question and answer game that takes place in the customer’s head.

The canvas itself is basically quite simply structured. First you think about what the main goal of the persona is and which jobs  lead to it. The steps are the phases of your journey.

Here’s how it works:

1 Goal: Start with the overall goal of your persona. What does she want to achieve at the end of the journey?

2 Jobs to be done: And now define the steps she has to take to reach the goal. Try to record only the most important steps. Don’t get too detailed. In the end there should be 4 to 6 phases.

3 Experience Flow: Now it’s time to tell the whole story. What happens between the participants? Who else is involved in the process besides the client? Which steps take place? Make connections between the Post-its to visualize the flow.

4 Inner Dialogue: In each phase of the journey your customer goes through a rollercoaster of emotions. He constantly conducts an inner dialogue, which is characterized by questions. You probably know this, when you poke around in an online shop. You ask yourself: “Is this the right product? Is the seller credible? Is the product available cheaper elsewhere? Do I see all the costs?” These questions are very much driven by your values. Try to capture this dialog.

5 Moment of truth: Every inner dialogue leads in the end to a decision and thus to action. This is the so-called moment of truth. So it is what is crucial for the customer to move on to the next phase and not to jump off! What would this moment be for your journey?

6 Pains: In addition to the emotional Inner Dialogue, the customer and the business side also encounters very concrete obstacles and problems such as media breaks, ambiguities and annoying processes. You can record these here.

7 Opportunities: And finally it is all about identifying opportunities for innovation from the flow, the moment of truth and the pains you described.

The opportunities developed on this canvas are the starting point for ideation workshops. You and your team can now create ideas in a very focused and goal-oriented way without losing any mental leeway.