Arcana is an opinionated schema for aligning experience, tech and business

Arcana is an opinionated schema for multidisciplinary teams to align concepts in experience, technology and business. We use Arcana as a healthy starting point to help teams agree on a conceptual framework for large collections of information (such as scope for a transformation).

The framework models typical product / service innovation objects in a structured way that supports multiple views of a single source of truth. The core idea is that aligning the objects of design across multiple levels, and different lenses gives you an explicit mapping that makes it easier to make sense of large, evolving bodies of work. Arcana gives you a starting point for mapping those relationships.

It can be used to develop roadmaps, value chains, journey maps or capability models.

These schemas are used to organise programs or teams and can have long-lived effects. Arcana makes it easier to get started with a solid model that can be refined instead of invented and reworked at great cost.

Arcana V2.2

Field: These core concepts define the boundaries we're working within.

• Domain: A bounded context with a coherent business logic - the orienting field that Arcana is describing
• Horizons: Time or theme-bound slices of the same domain, providing clear boundaries for sequencing or investment envelopes.
• Scope: An agreed bundle of the described domain that is the focus of a specific envelope of activity or investment.

Actors: An entity with agency who engages with the domain.

• Need: Solution agnostic outcomes that actors wish to achieve.
• Practice: A method, material or meaning employed by an actor to organise their individual or cultural behaviour and perspective.

Journeys: A sequenced approach to aligning experience, business activities and technologies through the perspective of an actor.

• Main: The principal journey that defines the architecture of the experience. Branch journeys may enable variations or sections of this journey whilst remaining broadly compatible.
• Stage: Bounded sequence within a journey.
• Pillar: Key strategic theme or objective addressed by a journey. Often, but not necessarily aligned to a key strategic outcome the journey aims to enable.
• Moment: Granular episode within a journey stage, addressing unique needs.
• Branch: Secondary journeys that are broadly aligned, yet distinct from, a main journey.

Value Chain: Sequence of business processes, aligned to a journey.

• Process: Sequence of business workflows, aligned to a specific stage.
• Workflow: Sequence of business activities, aligned to a specific moment.
• Metric: Defined measurement used to quantify a Value Chain, aligned to Pillars.

Surfaces: The specific interactions that an entity offers to the outside world. These are the public surfaces that are experienced by other entities.

• Service: An intangible offering, delivered through one or more events, driven by an actor and mediated through tangible products.
• Product: A tangible proposition, addressing specific, bounded needs. Products in this schema function very similarly to "touchpoints" in classic service design.
• Feature: A specific element of a product, delivering a defined interaction or behavioural outcome.
• Flow: A specific sequence of events, across one or more surfaces, driven by an actor. Flows may be imagined by the team or empirical observations or real world interactions by actors.
• Channel: A defined interaction medium with unique characteristics (e.g. mobile or in-person). Features may be available across multiple channels and diverge in behaviour in key ways aligned to the channels unique characteristics.

Bridges: Bridges are cross-cutting elements that unify the various perspectives in the model. They are shared "units" that flow between elements of the model.

• Events: A discrete interaction within the domain with any of the objects. Events are a unifying key between all interactions.
• Data: Data is the life-blood and by-product of interactions. Actors interact with features, exchanging or producing data through the interactions.

Architecture: Architecture is the organisational and technology core required to provide external services.

• Capabilities: Solution-agnostic grouping of technology or business functions that meet foundational needs within a domain.
• Function: Technology components used by multiple features to deliver common or shared outcomes.

Meta: These are a schema for some critical annotations that sit above actual data structure and can comment on any part of it.

• Issue: Issues are a hold-all label for areas of interest or concern across the domain.
• Insight: Insights are concepts or ideas that provide explanatory power for the current or desired behaviour of actors or objects within a domain.
• Note: Notes are a meta-category for communication within the domain, about any element of the domain.