User Journey Map

The duration of customer journey mapping depends on how many touchpoints and or persona’s you want to map out. You might want to break this workshop into smaller workshops, one for every stage / touchpoint / persona to keep people focused.

Briefing

Define the scope of your journey map. In an ideal world you focus only on the experience of one single persona, with a single user story, with one single goal. Otherwise the journey map may be to high level. Which persona are you going to map? What is the main goal of this persona? If you defined the scope, please make sure that you invited the right people.

STEP 1 – Set the stage (5 min)

Before we start it’s really important that every team member thoroughly understands the persona and why he’s conducting this journey. What is the goal of the persona? Is this clear for everyone? It’s always best to read the persona out loud, some people might never seen the persona’s or have forgotten about them.

STEP 2 – Build a Back-story (10min)

Time to use sticky notes! Every team member writes down the reasons why your target persona would be on this journey. You’ll end up with a whole bunch of reasons: pain points, hidden needs, rational drivers… Gather all the sticky notes and group them. Now try to design a story from them…

STEP 3 – Map out what the customer thinks, does and feels (30 min)

We now should have a clear view why our our persona is going to walk and where she will end. Time to walk the walk in the shoes of our persona. Write down every single thing the persona does on a sticky note. Please note that you could also include questions or decisions. If your persona’s journey branches out, based by questions or decisions he has to make, let every participant map out each path. Keep in mind that the journey can run over more then one channel. For examle a website, phone, social media, app. It’s important to capture all those different channels. You could also split the map in different zones. For example what happens in the front end and what happens in the back end…

STEP 4 – Map out the pain points (10 min)

It’s time to go over the whole journey map again and try to define pain points. What are bottle necks? Where can it go wrong? What’s very difficult? What is not working like it should? Take a different color of sticky notes, red for example and place it at the corresponding touchpoints. Want to add some value? Think about what the impact could be for each pain point.

STEP 5 – add some emotions (15 min)

How does your persona feels and how does his emotions change during the different actions. Map this out in an area under the journey map.

STEP 6 – analyse the big picture (15 min)

Take a step back and have a helicopter view on the map. Look as a group for trends and patterns in the map.
– Where is a lot of confusion / frustration?
– Where don’t we fulfill expectations?
– Is this in line with the values of our product / company?

Try to look for areas or stages where you can improve the experience.

Pro tips to run this template

– No phones, no laptops!
– Usa a white board.
– Keep it visible, stick the journey map on the wall in your office.
– Check this map with customers or users, they could give you a lot of feedback.
– Running a benchmark? Do the same for your competitors.
– Use different color sticky notes.