Why You Should Make Journey Maps
What Is a Journey Map
Journey maps allow designers to visually lay out a user’s process when working toward a goal. A successful journey map combines the first three steps in design thinking: empathizing, defining, and ideating. Journey maps exercise our understanding of the user and the problem, helping us understand the details, pinpoint weak points, and ideate solutions.
Journey maps can take many forms but most frequently resemble geographic maps or game boards with distinct starting points, courses of action, and ends. Journey maps can be laid out like a timeline moving left to right or top to bottom. You can also get creative and add twists and turns if it helps distinguish user journey segments.
Make sure your journey map is laid out in a way that is easy for you and your team to understand and reference. You’ll want to refer to it frequently when elaborating on ideas or deciding which areas to target for improvement.
Making a Journey Map
There are six primary categories to consider when making a journey map, and when all are accounted for, they will ensure your journey map is thorough and effective.
Persona & Thoughts
Creating a persona for your map is vital because it forces us to focus on a specific problem. Without a persona to ground us, we often begin designing for the world at large. While this may seem appealing, it negates the purpose of a journey map. A well-rounded persona includes a photo and background information, such as age, profession, or other relevant demographics.
The persona should be as authentic as possible, so they need some thoughts. Consider what your persona might think or feel at each journey step. Include insights at every stage of your map to reinforce the human-centered purpose of this exercise.
Scenario
Next, write a scenario for the persona. Why is the persona embarking on this journey? Explain why they will take action and how it relates to who they are as a person – not just as a user or persona. This step helps us empathize with the user, understand the problem, and begin seeing unexpected issues or frustrations.
Journey Phases / Timeline
The journey phases break down the scenario into general steps that the user has to take to get from start to finish. These phases will be different for each unique journey map but can include stages such as researching, buying, and using an item or product. It can be tempting to go into detail in this phase, but we are still setting up the foundation of the problem.
Think of this stage as general modes of transportation in a journey. For example, you might take a taxi to the airport, take a plane to another country, take a subway to the city, and then walk to the hotel. This breakdown doesn’t include details like calling the taxi or getting a boarding pass but gives an overview of the experience.
Actions / Touchpoints
Actions and touchpoints break down the journey phases into specifics. This section will be the most specific to the problem you are examining and will be unique. No detail should be left behind when reviewing the user’s process here because this is where we can begin to think about opportunities for improvement.
There should be multiple actions or touchpoints for each journey phase that the user needs to complete before moving on to the next step. Consider the thoughts your persona may have during these actions to help ensure the solutions produced are human-centered and reveal problems that you may not have previously considered.
Emotions
Once the actions are complete, consider the user’s emotions during the process. Pausing to empathize with the user here helps ensure the touchpoints are thorough while also setting us up to think about opportunities for improvement.
It can help to identify a set of emotions that the user feels throughout the process and then identify specific journey phases or actions that provoke certain predetermined emotions. Having a defined group of emotions to work with can make the problem easier to understand because the journey could cause dozens of emotions simultaneously, but focusing on the most influential will be most helpful in solving the problem.
Opportunities for Improvement
Opportunities for improvement will likely reveal themselves while we define the journey phases and actions but don’t stop there. It may seem thorough enough to work with the most apparent problems but try to utilize this opportunity to dig deeper. Identifying opportunities for improvement does not mean developing fully formed solutions but calling out areas of the map where the user struggles or has unmet needs.
Internal Ownership
Internal ownership can sound like an opportunity to blame departments for areas where a process is lacking, but it should be viewed as an opportunity. It helps ensure that the problem is solved in the best way possible by identifying who will get to introduce changes to the product. Not only does identifying internal ownership ensure the right resources are applied to a problem, but it also creates accountability, ensuring that changes are made.
Put It to the Test
Now that you know the basics of journey maps, it’s time to put them to the test! I used a journey map to explore the experience of Diego, a high schooler who uses a free Spotify account and wants to upgrade to premium. Check out the journey map below to learn more about his experience and see how I applied these principles.
