🛤️User Journey Map
A user journey map is a visual representation of the process a user goes through to achieve a specific goal when interacting with a product or service. It outlines each step and touchpoint in the user’s journey, capturing their actions, thoughts, emotions, and pain points along the way. At its core, a user journey map is a strategic tool used to visualise and understand the user experience from start to finish. It is vey similar to customer journey map which shows the series of experiences a customer has with the company from the moment they recognise a need until that need is fulfilled or not. In UX Design, however, when we talk about “users” or a “user-centered approach/design/method”, we refer to everyone—including current customers, potential customers who do not yet know the product, those who have only heard of it, or those who have visited but not made a purchase.
This difference is particularly noticeable in those Journey Maps where the entry point—the step where the journey begins—is always directly the homepage of the application or Google with the user typing in the app's name or the type of service.
The difference between user and customer journey maps
Scope
Focuses on a specific user interaction with a product or feature.
Covers the entire customer lifecycle and all interactions with a brand.
Focus
Aligns with specific user needs and goals.
Aligns with overall business objectives like customer retention and brand loyalty.
Channel interaction
Single Channel Interaction. Often limited to interactions within a particular product or service.
Multiple Touchpoints and Channels. Includes all possible interactions across various channels.
Key components of a user journey map
Actor/User persona. The individual or user role whose journey you are mapping with a detailed representation of the demographics, behaviors, needs and goals.
Scenario. The context or situation in which the actor interacts with the product or service. It defines the specific situation or environment in which the journey takes place.
Goals & expectations. What the actor aims to achieve and their anticipated outcomes from the interaction. It clarifies what the user wants to accomplish and what they expect from the experience.
Phase name. It simply summarises the step in which the user is.
Action (doing). The specific steps or actions the actor takes during the journey. It details what the user physically does throughout the interaction.
Mindset (thinking). The thoughts the actor has at each stage of the journey, this provides insight into the user's mindset and emotional responses.
Feeling. The emotions the user experiences during the journey. This captures the emotional responses users have at different stages, which can highlight pain points or satisfaction.
Emotions. The emotional state of the actor at different stages of their journey. It serves as a visual representation to quickly grab the general status along the experience.
Opportunities & ideas. Potential improvements or innovations based on the user's experience and feedback. It identifies areas for enhancement or new ideas to better meet user needs.
Purpose of a User Journey Map
Understanding user experience: Provides a detailed view of the user’s experience, capturing both positive and negative aspects.
Identifying pain points: Helps identify challenges and frustrations that users encounter, highlighting areas for improvement.
Enhance user empathy: They foster empathy by highlighting the user’s emotions and experiences, encouraging designers to think from the user’s perspective.
Data-Driven design decisions: Provide a solid foundation for making informed design decisions based on user data and experiences..
Cross-functional collaboration: Facilitates a shared understanding among team members about the user journey, fostering collaboration and alignment.
Keep in mind. The journey mapping can only be created from the results of generative research, most commonly “user interviews” but also “field studies” (observing and interacting with users in their natural environment) and “open-ended surveys”.
From the analysis of qualitative research data, the sequence of actions the user has taken, is then commonly built using a template.
A User Journey Map is never compiled as a check list by filling up the template with assumptions and hypotheses as this will inevitably lead to misunderstanding the experience of the user or completely fail to understand it.
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