Change Communication Canvas
A canvas/worksheet for identifying communication needs regarding a change to your product or service to your customers/users.
Applications
Communication planning. Change management. Individual or group ideation of communication strategy for critical moments and milestones like new versions, feature deprecations, pricing changes, rebrands, consolidations.
Of Interest To
product marketers, product managers, product owners, tech startups, app designers, digital service providers, enterprise businesses, content designers, content strategists
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What It Is
The Change Communication Canvas is a worksheet and aid for facilitating conversations about communication needs with respect to changes to a product, app, website, service, or similar.
It is premised on a simple framework from Change is a Feature and related presentations for planning change communications:
- Communicate change in advance — inform users of upcoming changes
- Communicate change in context — note change when and where it has happened
- Communicate change in perpetuity — publicly document changes, and past versions, for future use and to aid self-service and DIY troubleshooting
The canvas further encourages you to consider the key messages to be communicated — or not communicated — to internal and external audiences.
Why It Matters
Many teams leave change communication up to the marketing department. While some new features and updates may warrant a marketing push, there are many more kinds of updates and changes to products and services that you may need to communicate about with your users and customers. Common examples include:
- Changes to plans and pricing
- New features
- Changed or deprecated features
- Changes in support for various devices, platforms, or operating systems
- Updates to policies
- “Under the hood” updates users might not appreciate unless you point them out
You can likely think of many more.
The canvas helps you discuss and determine what if any communications — emails, notifications, modals, tours, social posts, advertising, etc. — might be warranted by the change in question. Sometimes you’ll determine that it’s better not to say anything publicly. Sometimes you’ll discover that there are large implications to the change, and the communication needs are bigger than you might have expected.
How To Use It
The canvas was intentionally designed to resemble (in structure) canvases such as the Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas that are familiar to many startups, product teams, and UX teams.
The Change Communication Canvas can be used in similar ways to those canvases. Ideally, a small team of individuals familiar with the change in question would work together to quickly complete a first draft — providing answers for every question, however rough. Then, they would use each box and prompt to facilitate discussion and identify any gaps in their thinking. Finally, a summary could be written up to guide next steps.
Alternatively, you could use the canvas and its prompts as inspiration to organize a meeting or workshop agenda to explore the communication side of a more complex change management issue in-depth, and capture notes to the canvas or a recreation thereof that suits your purposes.
Related Media & Resources
- Presentation: Change is a Feature
- Training workshop: Communicating Change