Institutional Friction Mapping

What participants gain

• Visualize the cumulative impact of institutional friction on marginalized students.
• Identify specific touchpoints where faculty have the agency to remove structural barriers.
• Connect individual pedagogical choices to broader systemic institutional dynamics.

Materials needed

• Large rolls of butcher paper or wall-sized whiteboards
• Customer Journey Map canvases
• Sticky notes in 4 distinct colors
• Thick sharpies for drawing connection lines
• Dot voting stickers

How to run Institutional Friction Mapping, step by step

1. Divide the 20 teachers into 4 groups of 5, assigning each group a specific student persona (e.g., neurodivergent, first-generation, working parent).
2. Distribute the Customer Journey canvases and ask groups to define the standard timeline of a semester across the top axis.
3. Instruct groups to use blue sticky notes to map the standard actions the student must take (e.g., register, buy books, attend lecture).
4. Direct participants to use pink sticky notes to identify specific 'friction points' or biases encountered at each step for their assigned persona.
5. Ask groups to draw an 'emotional energy line' across the map, tracking the student's cognitive load and stress levels throughout the semester.
6. Prompt participants to use yellow sticky notes to identify the 'invisible labor' the student must perform to overcome the friction.
7. Instruct groups to use green sticky notes to brainstorm specific faculty interventions that could smooth out the identified friction points.
8. Facilitate a gallery walk where groups rotate to view and analyze the other personas' maps.
9. Reconvene the full group to synthesize overlapping friction points that affect multiple personas.
10. Guide a dot-voting exercise to prioritize which structural barriers the cohort wants to dismantle first.

Facilitator tips

• Ensure the personas are based on real institutional data, not stereotypes, to keep the exercise grounded.
• Watch out for the 'savior complex' during the intervention phase; focus on removing barriers, not 'fixing' the student.
• Encourage drawing and visual mapping rather than just writing text on the sticky notes.
• Remind participants to map the 'invisible labor' (e.g., code-switching, finding quiet spaces, navigating financial aid).
• If groups get stuck on institutional policies they can't control, redirect them to interventions within their own classrooms.

Common challenges

• Groups getting bogged down in complaints about administration - Use a 'Parking Lot' for issues outside faculty control.
• Relying on stereotypes for personas - Provide rich, data-backed persona profiles beforehand.
• Focusing only on major events (exams) - Prompt them to look at the micro-interactions (emailing a professor, group work).
• Overwhelming visual clutter - Enforce a strict color-coding system for the sticky notes.

Running it virtually

Utilize Mural or Miro with pre-built journey map templates. Use digital sticky notes and the platform's drawing tools to create the emotional energy lines, utilizing timed breakout rooms for group work.

Expected results

A comprehensive visual map of a student's journey through the semester, highlighting specific friction points, emotional drops, and actionable intervention zones for faculty.

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