A Fantastical Series

Lessons on Design Deliverables

Part 3: User Journey Maps

Welcome to Part 3 of this series on, as the title says, design deliverables. Check out Part 1 on user personas or Part 2 on competitive analyses if you’re interested!

User Journey Maps

Who wants to go on a magical journey filled with excitement, pain, perfectly normal moments, and relatable feelings? Who wants to go on a… User Journey? You do.

But in order to do so, we need a map… and not just any map. We need a special, empathetic, legible, user journey map!

Quick, interjecting disclaimer: User journey maps also go by the name “customer journey map” or just “journey map.” They all refer to the same, magical thing.

Adapted from Andy Miller

But first, what is a user journey map?

A user journey map is a map of the user’s journey.

…

Okay, I’ll try a little harder. A user journey map is a graphical representation of a scenario that describes the experience of a user in a situation where your product is either used or where it can be of assistance. Generally, they are expressed as a timeline that displays all of the touch points (an industry term for the instances that your product is used in a user’s day/relevant situation.) They are also equally helpful for identifying pain points (areas where your product could either be improved or implemented as a solution).

The cool thing about these journey maps is that their purpose is to help those involved in building/improving the product see through the eyes of the user. As we know, creating this user-centric thinking is invaluable for the UX of any product.

Different situations, different maps

Given that products can be in different stages, your user journey map may take different forms. Here are the two main situations a product could be in which differentiates the kind of content that your journey map will have:

1. If you have an existing product: A scenario where a user interacts with your existing product to help them meet a goal

• In this situation, touch points between the product and user are generally known. Therefore, you’d be looking for either more opportunities where touch points would be available or areas where your product could use some fine tuning to elevate that sweet sweet UX.

2. If you have an “in-the-works” product: A scenario where a user has to complete a task using current solutions (because your product isn’t available yet)

• Like a competitive analysis, this is typically used to identify gaps or pain points in which your product could be implemented as the solution. Essentially, in this situation, pain points can be potential touch points for your product.

As you can probably tell, a common thread through these two situations is the opportunity to see where users struggle, either with or without your product. This highlights the areas where improvements can be made to better serve the users when completing their goals. That’s basically the point of every empathizing deliverable that a UXer does, isn’t it?

Creating journey maps properly

NNgroup’s journey map template

When we were in school, journey maps were one of the most difficult things to design for me and my team. There were so many examples out there, some of which seemed beautiful and some that seemed clogged with information. We had a ton of variations to look at, and, again, we didn’t know what was necessary and what was superfluous. We of course had help and resources from our instructors, but we thought their examples were too bland. We were designers, of course! We wanted to flex our artistic muscles a little. Not that I blame younger me.

The problem that arose, in much the same way as the user personas in Part 1, was that we ended up losing the purpose of what the journey maps could do, and consequently, we lost the desired effect.

We ended up with something like this:

Good luck reading this!

The context around this particular map is that the product we were designing was “in-the-works,” meaning we were discovering where the user had pain points with the intention of creating a solution for them. As you can see, it’s quite.. Robust. We also thought the use of emojis to represent the user’s emotions were rather clever. In reality, they probably caused more confusion than empathy since they convey the user as an emotional rollercoaster.

So, as in tradition, I’d like to give you some key pointers for constructing journey maps, if you’ll allow me. Hopefully what follows is helpful.

Know before you go

Before beginning a user journey map, it’s important to note that you must have 2 things:

1. Strong empathy for the user

• This means that you must have done plenty of user research and have established your user personas. You need to ensure that your journey map represents a true story; making inferences without evidence here can quickly mislead your project goals

2. Business goals

• Basically, know the reason why you are creating a journey map. For example: Wanting to better understand a particular user’s behavior, refocusing organizational perspective to consider real human experiences, learning where your customer’s pain points are, etc.

You should never create a journey map if you lack these two things. Without a good understanding of the user, you won’t have a successful product. Without goals, you have no direction or purpose.

Key elements of a journey map

Now we’ll talk about what the necessary elements for a journey map are. As a caveat, I say “necessary” to mean what is foundational. Some features are common to journey maps (i.e. emojis, emotional charts, word bubbles), but not exactly necessary. What is listed below are solely the basic needs of journey maps:

1. A persona and their relevant scenario

• Like it was mentioned earlier, you need to have your persona(s) established in order for this to work. Moreover, that persona must have a personalized and realistic scenario to go through so that you can identify where you can help.
• If you have more than one persona type, ensure each persona has their own personalized experience. Different personas do not have the same experiences because they represent different kinds of people, and different kinds of people experience things differently. Facts.

2. Scenario phases & the user’s actions + responses

• Be sure to break up your map with the particular phases (or stages) that your persona will go through in their scenario. For example, if a persona was trying to buy toilet paper on your company’s toilet paper buying app, the persona could experience 4 phases: Searching for toilet paper (phase 1), comparing toilet papers (phase 2), buying toilet paper (phase 3), and receiving toilet paper (phase 4).
• Within each phase, it is crucial that you list out what actions the user is taking to accomplish the next step of their overall goal, as well as their emotional states while they do so. Think of this as the narrative section, the part that tells the story of their journey.

3. Takeaways/Opportunties

• After the map is laid out, you’ll want to include any takeaways or insights that you’ve discovered. This is the place where you’ll note any potential touch/pain points and the opportunities that your product has to improve them.
• These typically lay at the bottom of the journey maps for better readability.

Those three elements are the foundational parts of a user journey map. Again, depending on the business goals, there can be more elements added to it. However, adhering to those three things above will ensure that you have the proper footing to expand the story that your journey map tells.

Things to help keep your map in check

Blush.design

Like a good sage should, I wanted to give a few pieces of advice to keep you on the right track. I think it’s important to draw on my own experiences here to help you avoid getting carried away when creating a user journey map like I had in school. So, below are a list of the takeaway lessons I learned when I was beginning to make journey maps. I also think that they’re generally good ideas for most deliverables, but that’s just my opinion:

1. Understand your goal before you begin

• I feel like I say this all of the time, but I cannot stress enough in saying how helpful it is to know the “why” that holds up the “what.” List out the purposes of your journey map and be sure to build around them.

2. Structure your content properly before prettifying it, if you have to prettify it

• Please don’t create something pretty just for the sake of creating something pretty. Aesthetically pleasing must come last, especially when the purpose of your journey map is meant to build empathy and illustrate future product directions. You’ll want the information to be clear, trust me.

3. Tell a relevant story

• Much like the journey map my team and I created, there were a TON of experiences the persona had that were not relevant at all to our goals. Tell the story truthfully, but also concisely.

Wrapping Up

Empathy!

The most important thing in UX is that we truly understand the users. That’s why we go through so many steps to do so. The amount of time we spend trying to really dive deep into the user’s mindset and experiences is entirely purposeful, and another great way to do this is a user journey map.

So, in case you need a refresher, or just like things to be recapped, here are the key elements in journey maps:

1. A persona and their relevant scenario
2. Scenario phases & the user’s actions + responses
3. Takeaways

Also, here are the three sagely wisdoms from my early design roots to keep in mind when creating journey maps:

1. Understand your goal before you begin
2. Structure your content properly before prettifying it, if you have to prettify it
3. Tell a relevant story

And that will conclude the magical adventure of our user journey! We have but one final chapter left, my friends. I shall see you there.

This article was written based on research, experience, and the insights that I’ve gained throughout my UX journey. Please feel open to discussing any thoughts, questions, or conflicts that you may have and I’d be happy to learn more. Also, I encourage you to add me on LinkedIn. Just be sure to say hi let me know where you’re from!

My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samueljaklich/