User Journey Map
What is it?
Flesh out what the journey looks like for people through an experience like using a product, accessing a service or using a system.
Why and when should I use this?
This tool helps us pin down what happens at different stages of an experience for a user. We get a window into what they are feeling so we can better understand their lived experience. It can also help highlight critical touchpoints from a user's perspective.
How much time should I spend on this?
20-30 minutes. This is a great research tool that makes visual sense of data you have gathered – extra time can be added to invite users to give feedback which can be used to refine it.
Who should I involve in this?
Work with a stakeholder whose experience you need to understand. Alternatively, insights gathered from interviews and research can be used to form a persona that you can base the journey map on.
How to use it...
- Decide the phases: Think about the overarching phases of the experience you are mapping. This will help you organise information. For example, in the scenario of a person accessing and using a community service the phases could be discover, try, buy, use, retention, advocacy.
- Add user's actions: Under each phase, write the steps taken by the person or persona you are working with. Start with the most critical steps and build out from here to you don't get stuck in the granular detail. Use post-it notes at first so you can easily move between phases if you need to.
- Map mindsets and emotions: Jot down the thoughts, motivations, questions of your user – this is their mindset as they move through the experience. Plot these based on the emotion felt by the user in that instance, with positive high, neutral middle, and negative low. Link these with a line to visualise how the journey feels.