The process

I facilitated an experience mapping session with three social listening and digital content specialists, based on years of qualitative social listening data. We mapped the progression of survivors’ social media discussions and experiences through the phases of a disaster, and identified opportunities for the agency to add value to the conversation (in teal green on the map).

The bottom half of the map focuses on the role of FEMA's digital/communications staff: what to anticipate and pay attention to.

Challenges

Mapping the emotions of survivors was challenging since a mix of emotions occur in each phase. Survivors experience disasters differently, depending on the severity of impact, their personal situation, etc. and a positive/negative scale wouldn't capture the range and variety of emotions that surface in a given phase. We decided to use five emoji to represent the range of emotions, with descriptive labels to get more precise at each stage. The larger the emoji, the more dominant that emotion is at that stage.

Application and reception

The map helped staff gain empathy for survivors, and gave internal stakeholders the big picture from a survivor's point of view. When shared with folks from other divisions, one who was a survivor of Hurricane Katrina said it captured their experience exactly, even though it was ten years ago.

The map was used to train digital communications specialists to anticipate messaging needs, and served as a reference point during disaster response. A large version was printed and displayed in the team's area, and the visual was a tool for a quick gut check in the midst of disaster response.