Desire paths: Expect the unexpected when people interact with your business

Years ago, when I was a student at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, I met a staff member whose job was "continuous improvement."

This job title intrigued me. At the U, as it is lovingly referred to, continuous improvement was a focus area completely embraced by the administration. This one staff member was charged with walking the campus, talking to students and faculty and making notes and reports about ways the campus experience could be improved. He observed behavior, asked for feedback and reported back his insights.

During a memorable conversation with the manager of continuous improvement he told me that he studied, among other things, the cow paths (his phrase), the informal routes people would take when walking across the beautiful campus.

He observed that, often, when a tree was in bloom, people would walk closer to see it, off the paved walkways, and new routes would form. At times it made sense for the university to move portions of paths, they would repave the walkways to accommodate the new ways people were enjoying the campus.

These paths are called desire paths. Urban planners study them, and campuses famously pay close attention to them as their primary users, students, faculty, staffers and visitors, shape the experience of the campus informally. There is a lot to say about desire paths more broadly as they can relate to marketing.

When we become acutely aware of the ways customers, clients and people who interact with a business actually experience the products and services we offer, we can improve the business. Cow paths might be for urban planners but customers use websites, products and services in often unique ways that should be considered. Consider the virtual desire paths that exist in nearly every organization.

The founders of Bombas, launched with an ideal that for every pair of socks they sold they would donate a pair of socks to an organization caring for unhoused people. Sounds pretty good, right? Over time the founders became aware, thanks to focus groups of unhoused users of their socks that light colors with fanciful patterns were less than ideal.

Darker colors were preferred as those folks often don't have access to adequate bathing and laundering facilities and can end up wearing socks longer than was initially realized. The Bombas team shifted the products they were donating to be darker colors and spun from a yarn that had an antimicrobial element to protect the users' skin. They have gone even further to refer to their customers as being paying and unpaying customers with both types being equally valued and equally invited to focus groups.

Desire paths point observant leaders toward new ways of thinking about a given space, product or service. As we begin 2023, give thought to the ways in which our stakeholders are utilizing our businesses. What informal interactions are they undertaking? Are there unexpected uses of your products that need more attention?

You might be reading this and thinking, "I work in an office, what desire paths do we offer?" I have a suggestion that you audit the collateral you share with customers.

Do you give people Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint decks or other handmade, desktop-published items to support your marketing or selling proposition? If you do, you have proverbial desire paths that need to be formalized.

How do you formalize such items? One way is through user-centered design. The central question you must ask is how do people experience these collateral items? And, depending, on the answer(s) you uncover you probably need to engage the services of an experienced designer to help you reposition the collateral in a way that feels good to the recipient.

Symbolic desire paths can take so many forms. I'm principally interested in the conceptual ways people use social media, websites and print collateral to communicate.

Think of all the times people use social channels such as Twitter to complain to companies like airlines when luggage goes missing, to cable companies when service is interrupted and to elected officials when strong opinions are not being clearly heard. The social media companies have, in these instances, become virtual desire paths, often amplifying consumer complaint. What it really means is the other channels are not working and these new approaches are the paths for people to be heard.

In 2023 challenge yourself to consider the desire paths your audience segments are utilizing to get your attention, use your services or to simply interact with your team or products. Take comfort in the notion that these interactions are dynamic and you may find incredible benefits from celebrating these paths and enriching your customer's experience.

I hope you take comfort in the unexpected this year.

• Rebecca Hoffman is the founder and principal of Good Egg Concepts, a strategic communication and brand marketing consulting practice serving clients around Chicagoland and nationally.