A guide to user journey mapping

Journey maps can be created in many tools and formats. Don’t overthink it, start simple with sticky notes or a simple whiteboard tool. There’s no “right way” to create a journey map, they will look different depending on the business, product or service you are mapping out. Below we share the steps you can take when creating a journey map.

Step 1: Identify the scenario

When thinking about how to create a user journey map, the first step is to identify the specific scenario you’ll be examining.

You can look at scenarios like:

• What moments are causing people to call customer service?
• How are new hires experiencing our onboarding process?
• What factors influence customers to upgrade their subscription?

It’s also essential to think about this user journey and its relevance to the big picture. What is the larger context for this experience, and what other factors might be influencing the user’s journey?

For example, within the customer service ecosystem, users can call, chat, sometimes visit a store, sometimes a sales rep visits their home, or all customer service is self-serve. Ideally, all those experiences are equally seamless or even enjoyable for users. But if one of these individual experiences is inferior, it impacts the customer service experience. It’s essential to consider how this single journey influences and is influenced by other factors before you start.

Step 2: Research

When you create a user journey map, the second step is to identify your target user. This can be a group like current customers, customers of competitors’ experiences, employees, or even specific sub-segments of customers.

Then, double-check that the scenario is timely and relevant to your target. For example, if the scenario is onboarding, the users you learn from should be current employees who are going through onboarding now or have completed onboarding within a few months of the research.

It’s also essential to understand the length of time you’ll be studying. Do you want to look at a user’s 5-minute interaction with an app? Their experience with a brand over a year? The period matters here.

Once you’ve identified your target group, the period you’ll be examining, and ensured this scenario is relevant to your target user, you can move to gathering information. Conduct in-depth interviews, perform a contextual inquiry, or analyze the data from user surveys to understand each step the user takes as they interact with this digital experience.

You’ll want to understand as much about the user’s goals and needs while going through the experience, and their pain points along the way. During this step, it’s essential to use as many different types of research as needed to ensure your data is as comprehensive as possible.

Step 3: Synthesize

Once you have hit saturation with your data, move to finding commonalities within the users’ journeys. Create “stages” and identify key moments, touchpoints, and emotions that happen within each stage. It can also help to focus on these users’ needs and determine whether or not users can be grouped into personas or archetypes. From there, analyze the data to pinpoint what’s working—as well as pain points, user reactions to those issues, what the user needs from the client at that moment, and the available methods for troubleshooting.

This is often a great time to compare the data to initiatives that have already been implemented to meet users’ needs and identify opportunities for further research on touchpoints or archetypes.

Step 4: Build the user journey map

Once you’ve synthesized and examined your data, you can start using the stages you’ve developed to begin plotting the user journey. It helps to create a touchpoint map, visualizing the customer processes and key interactions they have with you.

When building the overall customer journey map, size and color help to emphasize major key moments and touchpoints, and varying highs and lows in the path conveys positive and negative emotions felt throughout the journey. This can sometimes lead to diverging paths if there is an overwhelming pain point that could occur.

It’s important to remember that while the user journey map tells the basic story of the user’s journey, it does not need to account for the nuance of each archetype. Think back to the goal of your map; what key insights do you want to communicate? Let that influence the data you highlight.

Step 5: Make it useful

This basic journey map will help you understand the user, but not necessarily how to address the user or the issues users face. To take it a step further, identify opportunities and create strategies to meet the user’s needs. This is the time to transition from research to design and start to take advantage of the insights you’ve gleaned.

Step 6: Further research

Sometimes, we don’t get all the insights needed to flesh out the full story during the first research phase. Depending on the subject matter, a quantitative survey may be required to understand the frequency of situations surrounding a particular touchpoint or validate whether a key moment happens often enough to be included in the journey map.