Make circular choices easy and rewarding
Map the customer experience from first awareness to return, reuse, repair, or referral—and discover where circular choices can become simpler, more useful, and more appealing.
This template helps you explore both the customer experience and the practical steps that keep products and materials in circulation. Use the stage-by-stage prompts and touchpoint mapping table to uncover friction, build trust, and turn opportunities into improvements.
Who is it for?
Product and service designers, customer experience teams, entrepreneurs, sustainability practitioners, marketers, and facilitators developing or improving a circular offer. It supports products and services involving rental, subscriptions, sharing, refill, repair, resale, and take-back.
How to use it
Choose a customer group and a specific product, service, or offer. Decide whether you’re mapping today’s experience or designing a future one, then explore five stages:
Discover: Understand what draws customers in, makes the offer relevant, and builds trust from the first interaction.
Consider: Explore questions and concerns around price, quality, ownership, accessibility, and service terms.
Access: Map how customers buy, borrow, rent, subscribe, or refill—and what makes getting started straightforward.
Use and care: Identify the guidance and support that help customers maintain, repair, share, and enjoy the product for longer.
Return and recirculate: Make it easy and worthwhile to return, resell, donate, repair, or upgrade, keeping value in circulation.
At each stage, capture the customer’s goals, touchpoints, feelings, and frustrations. Use customer feedback or research where available, and mark assumptions that still need testing.
Bring your findings into the touchpoint mapping table. Choose the improvements to prioritise and assign owners to move them forward. For a group workshop, start with individual sticky notes before discussing and clustering ideas.
What will you leave with?
A shared view of the circular customer journey, a clearer understanding of barriers and opportunities, and a prioritised set of improvements with owners. Use the completed map to guide design decisions, test assumptions with customers, and make circular participation easier throughout the experience.
