Situational Survey

Summary: Before you dream up a “user journey,” you must map the hard physics of the user’s life. The Situational Survey inventories the non-negotiable constraints of time, money, physical space, and attention.

The Core Insight

Behavior requires capacity. A user cannot perform a behavior if they lack the resource budget for it, no matter how “motivated” they are.

We do not ask “What do you want?” We ask “What do you have?”

Constraint Mapping Checklist

1. Temporal Budget

• Granularity: Do not ask “Do you have time?” Ask “Show me your calendar.”
• Fragmentation: A user with 60 minutes of free time fragmented into 5-minute blocks cannot perform a 30-minute deep-work task.
• Energy Rhythms: When is the user exhausted? (e.g., 6 PM parents). Avoid scheduling high-cognitive-load behaviors here.

2. Financial Reality

• Liquidity: Does the user have available cash at the moment of decision?
• Psychological Budgets: People categorize money (“Rent money” vs “Fun money”). Which bucket does your behavior pull from?

3. Physical/Digital Environment

• Device Context: Is the user on a phone with spotty signal? Are they driving?
• Physical Space: Does the behavior require privacy? Quiet? Desk space? (e.g., “Record a video interview” fails if the user lives in a crowded dorm).

The “Kill Filter”

Use the Situational Survey to eliminate candidate behaviors.

• Candidate: “Watch a 20-minute video.” -> Survey: User consumes content on commute (fragmented). -> KILL.
• Candidate: “Upload tax docs.” -> Survey: User only has mobile device; docs are physical. -> KILL (or require scanner feature).

Output

A set of Hard Constraints. Any behavior that violates these is automatically disqualified, saving you from building a “solution” that physically cannot happen.