Walking in Participants' Shoes: Customer Journey Mapping as a Tool to Identify Barriers to Program Participation

The Strengthening the Implementation of Responsible Fatherhood Programs (SIRF) project uses rapid learning cycles in an effort to improve the enrollment, engagement, and retention of fathers in nine current federal Fatherhood Family-focused, Interconnected, Resilient, and Essential (FIRE) grantees and one former recipient of a federal fatherhood grant. This brief illustrates how SIRF and program teams used a human-centered design technique called customer journey mapping, a collaborative process that puts the needs and goals of participants at the center of efforts to design or improve a product or service. Mapping helped both the program and SIRF teams to better understand fathers’ program experiences and perspectives, and to identify where program processes might be restructured to increase fathers’ participation.