Using ecosystem maps
The most obvious benefit of the ecosystem map is understanding and communicating a holistic overview of the user experience, and how interconnecting parts relate to each other. This can help creating a holistic strategy, and it can drive innovation, as we discussed before.
We can use the map to identify enablers to our solution, and flag threats. For example, if we want to create a gambling app, the Google Play Store would be flagged, because it will not allow such an app. Gambling apps are allowed in Apple's App Store, so that would be an enabler. For Shutter Swipe, the biggest threat is awareness, found on the second scale level of the why direction.
Some authors (for example, Polaine, A. et al., 2013) also mark motivators on their ecosystem maps, by adding a red border around certain hexagons. Those motivators are almost always found in in the why direction, and I think it's not really necessary to mark them. Most of the time they are trivial. In our example, the...
