Envisioning future user journeys: Tarot Cards as a design tool
Have you ever noticed that Tarot readers are very good at telling short, useful, moving and motivating stories that are easy to remember? We did.
At Hiveworks, we believe in telling good stories. They are the start of any conversation and key to making things happen. That is why we decided to explore the world of Tarot, and incorporate the archetypal figures that have successfully served storytelling purposes for centuries, into current design practices.
The result of our exploration is all packaged into a colourfully good-looking tool which we named, Tarotelling. It helps product and service designers to envision current and future customer journeys.
In this article we will explain what elements of traditional Tarot reading have been incorporated into Tarotelling, and how you can use it when your design process needs some serendipitous insights to move things forward.
Translating mystical meaning into practical design language
If you are a designer, you might often find yourself in a room filled with people who are not too excited by the idea of being part of an ‘ideation workshop’ because they don’t consider themselves ‘creative’. While creativity can certainly be part of many ideation techniques, it isn’t actually what ideation is about. It’s a skill that can be learned and practiced(Mary Barbour, 2016).
The Tarotelling cards serve as stimulus for people to get into a creative mindset in design workshops. The cards are a modern interpretation of the Arcana, which are archetypes representing meanings, qualities and key moments that recur in people’s lives.
For these cards to resonate with the context we live in and design for, we needed to spend a great deal of time translating the meanings of all Major Arcana in a modern way. Here’s an example of how we did this for the VI Major Arcana card known as ‘The Lovers’:
Some of the concepts associated with this card are taking responsibility, making up your mind and dilemma .
In this Tarotelling card, ‘Choice’ is the primary meaning presented. The concept of choice is represented by an illustration of a humanised animal character. In this instance the character is a bird in a cage with the possibility to fly away. Having the possibility to leave means the bird needs to take a decision of considering the possibility or not.
The meaning is accompanied by 2 divergent mindsets, that describe how someone could approach a situation. For instance will the ‘bird’ (person) act with mindfulness or with indifference when approaching the decision of ‘leaving the cage’? I.e. will the bird leave without its eggs, or ponder the situation and wait until the eggs hatch?
Traditional tarot cards are numbered from 0–21 according to the Fool’s Journey, which is a metaphor for the journey through life that one must incorporate to realise wholeness.
That might sound a bit mysterious to some of you, but the Hero’s journey, which you might all be more familiar with, follows a similar pattern. Psychologist Carl Jung believed that behind the scenes of human life lay archetypes, “Constantly repeating characters which occur in the dreams of all people and the myths of all cultures”. Jung suspected that these archetypes are a reflection of the story we all share in common.
Later author and mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote about that story, calling it “The Journey of a Hero”. It was his opinion that there lay behind every story, one standard story, or legend that carried all the basics, and that story typified each of our lives (Robert Holmes, 2015).
The back of the card in this instance (image 02) retains the original number 6 of the lovers card and describes a key moment during a person’s journey when interacting with a product or service in relation to the overall meaning of the card, i.e. taking a decision, the description of the experience, going through the process of validating your choice.
Together, the tarotelling cards represent a journey of a person using a product or service. Following three phases: inform, engage and retain, it completes a story arc, the rise and fall of a story.
Using Tarotelling for ideation sessions
Lateral thinking dominates ideation sessions and cultivates the ability to let go of old patterns in order to deliver new ideas (Mary Barbour, 2016). Tarotelling helps designers create fully formed stories during ideation workshops with end users or clients and envision the future of a product or service in exciting ways.
This is how we run ideation sessions using Tarotelling, for this practical example, we will divide it into two parts.
- Part 1 focuses on an activity where groups frame insights relating to users’ context, leveraging the knowledge of the people in the room.
- Part 2 focuses on outlining a new journey and coming up with ideas to enhance the experience. For each part we designed a canvas to help record insights and guide the conversation whilst using the tarotelling cards.
Part 1- Exploring users’ context
In Tarot, readers spread the cards differently according to the type of question the client needs to answer. There are many types of spreads e.g. true love, daily essentials, spiritual guidance etc, the main difference is between posing an open question i.e.’ who is my true love?’ or a closed question i.e. ‘will I find my true love?’.
The Tarotelling canvas (image 04) is based on our interpretation of the Celtic cross, which tarot readers use to frame complex problems and envision a roadmap toward a solution client is facing.
The Tarotelling canvas allows you to explore the users’ context through nine questions. The first three questions aim to explore a broad topic that the group wants to address (e.g. food), followed by exploring a related service or system to the topic of choice (e.g. food delivery) and finally narrowing it down to a specific product or service (e.g.Uber eats).
The Tarotelling cards are used to stimulate and guide conversation while answering all nine questions. They were purposely designed as stimulus for participants to step away from providing banal answers and instead draw upon personal experiences, thus providing more meaningful insights.
During the first part of the session participants uncover insights related to:
- Aspects related to the situation of the user
- Key positive and/or negative aspects to be considered
- Determinant factors which drive users’ behaviour
Part 2- Envisioning future journeys
In the second part of the session, the insights accompanied by the cards are transferred into the Tarotelling story canvas (image 05). Now, the cards are flipped to uncover key moments unveiling a new user flow made of nine steps.
This process revitalises a classic ‘to-be’ journey process.
The reason why Tarotelling cards spontaneously create a new flow, when ordered from lowest to highest, is because these are numbered just like traditional Tarot cards to represent the ‘Fool’s Journey’.
Once a new user flow is created, participants can go ahead and start envisioning different ways to enhance the outlined experience. This process becomes much more meaningful and easy when paired with the insights from part one, considering the problems to solve become more tangible and inspiring for participants.
After the the canvas has been completely filled with ideas for all nine steps of the journey, participants can vote for what they believe are the best ideas out of all, for further development.
You should start Tarotelling too!
Tarotelling was designed with adaptability in mind and can be used in various ways and during different moments of a product and service design process across a variety of industries.
It can be used in clients’ workshops to collectively acquire knowledge of the people using their product or service or during workshops with end users, to involve them in the design process or validate experiences.
Tarotelling was developed by Hiveworks, a design-led consultancy based in London and Paris, in partnership with Ilaria Scarpellini.
Please contact us at creative@hiveworks.com, If you are interested in the tool, we offer introductory workshops for you and your team to start using Tarotelling. This tool is flexible and we are happy for each practitioner to make it their own and share it with the Design community.
