Journey map

Summary

Document that visually illustrates an individual user’s needs, the series of interactions that are necessary to fulfill those needs, and the resulting emotional states a user experiences throughout the process.

What it is

Customer journey maps are documents that visually illustrate an individual customer’s needs, the series of interactions that are necessary to fulfill those needs, and the resulting emotional states a customer experiences throughout the process.

By detailing a customer’s needs throughout an experience and revealing how each interaction negatively or positively impacts the customer’s emotional state, UX professionals can convert volumes of research findings and analysis into a concise, yet visually compelling story, which stakeholders across many levels of an organization can easily understand and interpret.

What makes a customer journey map much more powerful than simply delivering personas and scenarios is its ability to highlight the flow of the customer experience—from the ups and downs along the way to those critical pain points where our attention and focus are most essential. While personas and scenarios put a face to a name and can deliver vivid narratives that communicate a customer’s overall needs, journey maps break a customer’s experience down into individual interactions, making the needs and emotions easier to recognize and more digestible.

With internal and external research in hand, journey-mapping leaders need to distill their findings about how customers interact with the company, what they want from each interaction, and how they feel about each interaction today—the three key elements of a journey map.

Who does it

The whole project team, preferably with input from UX

Why to do it

Encourages conversation and collaboration
Highlights the flow of the customer experience
Enables stakeholders to collectively discuss opportunities for improving the overall customer experience

Usage

 At Research and Analysis