What is a User Journey Map?
Just as the Persona describes the end user, the User Journey Map represents their experience. It is a step-by-step visual representation of the user experience capturing all the relevant data in one place. It charts what’s working and conversely where and when problems are occurring.
Why are they useful?
A User Journey Map that is based on present day insights will help you identify where and why to intervene in order to improve or optimise the user experience. This can be used for anything from a purchase journey to an internal business process.
Once you have conceived a new solution, a User Journey Map can also be designed to plan, trace and monitor the future journey of users.
How to use a User Journey Map
The map should be structured around the key journey stages of the user. These stages may be well established in the business or you can create them from your own observations. You’ll build the map, drawing on the insights from your research. You’ll fill in the emotional journey such as frustrations and delights and add contextual data that may be relevant.
Where you are able to identify the struggles of a user or “pain points” and relate them to an aspect of the experience within your control, you now have potential opportunities around which to innovate.
Tips
- Start with the simplest version of a User Journey Map.
- The tool we have created can be worked up fast with a client.
- You might go on to layer in detail and build a more complex version at a later stage.
