There are lots of different approaches to creating customer journey maps. The templates and techniques used to create them range from very simple and high level to highly detailed and insight-rich. You can spend hours to weeks and even months generating a journey map. But as NFL Running Back Ricky Waters once said “For who…..for what?”
We tend to see journey maps in one of two ways. They can either be used as a discovery tool or a planning tool. In the discovery mode, we use journey maps to describe the current state of a given journey in order to empathize with the user, identify pain points, and expose potential solution ideas or areas for further research and testing. To the right, you can see an example of a Hard Yards journey map we did as discovery. To keep this journey map concise and usable, we started with a specific scenario, then mapped the steps a persona would take to accomplish it. Once we had the journey visualized, we turned our insights into some specific opportunities for change.
In the planning mode, journey maps can be used to map out a new experience from the ground up. This is often useful when launching a new product or service. By spending time detailing out the phases, tasks/actions, and proposed emotional journey, we can begin with the end in mind. To the left is a highly visual depiction of five distinct phases and all the customer touch points within those phases to accomplish a new service. This can be a great starting point for the creation of an initial backlog and can be transitioned into a story map for more detailed planning.
Regardless of purpose, all journey maps tend to share some common characteristics:
Actor – Journey maps focus on a specific actor or persona. This allows us to go deeper into the user’s perspective and really immerse ourselves in understanding what it feels like to go through the journey of using some product or service.
Scenario – Journey maps are built around a specific scenario in the life of the actor. The more broad the scenario the more chaotic the maps become and ultimately less useful. Narrowing down the scenario allows us to go deeper in understanding the experience.
Expectations – While the Actor is usually based on a persona that was previously created, each of those personas will have different expectations based on their demographics and psychographics. It can be useful to record them to build empathy.
Phases – It’s often quite useful to begin the construction of the journey map by thinking about the high level phases of the journey. This gives some structure to the map and allows us to progressively elaborate on details in the context of a larger user experience.
Tasks/Actions – Journey maps capture specific tasks that a user is trying to achieve and/or actions they take along the way.
Emotions/Mindset – Emotion maps allow us to visualize where the pain points exist in the journey. These insights are typically collected based on user interviews, observation, surveys, and user testing.
Opportunities – Often, journey maps record ideas on what pain points we may want to address or generally where there may be ways to improve the user experience.
Here’s one more content-rich example from Uber. This example also contains the core characteristics but has been enhanced with visuals. The team has added a picture of the user, wireframes of the mobile experience, color-coded emotions, and more depth in terms of the opportunities for improvement.
So how might you put it to work for you in developing products and services? The possibilities are endless (I hate that phrase. Are they really endless!?). Anyway, however you choose to use them, remember these last few tips:
This isn’t a check the box exercise – If these artifacts don’t create enduring value and help influence what and how you build, then do something different.
Make it a team sport – By engaging the team and stakeholders in the creation of a journey map, we can gain alignment and buy-in on which problems to solve and which solutions to build
Iterate – You will continue to learn and should expect to refactor your journey map based on the insights you gain. As you deliver solutions, the journey will change.
Go. Create. Experiment. We hope you enjoy your (ahem) journey.