What is User Journey Mapping?

AN INTRO

When making a product/app or service, it’s important that your product actually adds value to the “already-behavior” of your user or customer.

​Let’s say you want to check the weather for the day. You open your weather app -- What is the first thing you expect to see in a weather app? Likely the current temperature of your location when opening the app + a forecast for the day. It would be silly (and likely a waste of time) if you opened the weather app only to find…. last year’s weather history for a random small city far away; This information would not meet your goal (to check the weather forecast for the day of your location), and you’d likely never open that app again when trying to meet that specific goal.
Your user journey in this example is simple:

1. You wake up in the morning and are planning your day.
2. You wonder what the weather will be outside
3. You open the weather app
4. In an instant, you get the current weather + today’s forecast for your location.
5. ​You go forth with your day, now informed on what weather to expect.
   
   

As shown above, a user journey is a simple breakdown of steps that informs a the product-maker of the user’s behavior at a high level. User journeys help inform companies how their products/service comes into play in the everyday lives of their target user.

WHAT USER JOURNEYS ARE NOT

User Journeys are not to be confused with the term “User Flow.” The two are related, but they are not the same. A User Journey is a high level step by step of a user’s story; they do not get into the nitty gritty details of interfaces, copy, or anything specific to the product design. A User Journey is concerned with the bigger picture steps of a User’s day.
A User Flow on the other hand is specific to what the user might see when they interact with your product. Its focus is on the actual interaction steps that the user embarks when using your product.

TIPS FOR CRAFTING YOUR USER JOURNEY

User Journeys begin with understanding your users behavior. This step comes after (ideally) you have conducted basic research about your users’ daily motivations/goals and frustration/paint points. A User Persona Card will be extremely useful for User Journey Mapping, as it will inform you on your user’s regular routine and habits as it pertains to your product/service.
User Journey Maps are the visual representation of key elements once you’ve broken down your user’s journey into linear steps. Start by choosing a user goal (i.e. to check today’s weather forecast) and then begin listing out steps of how they achieve that goal with your product/app. Let’s say your User Persona is based on a target user, let’s call her Marie. A breakdown of her User Journey might look like this:

1. Marie wakes up in the morning and is planning her day.
2. She wonder what the weather will be outside
3. She opens your weather app.
4. In an instant, Marie gets the current weather + today’s forecast for her current location.
5. She goes forth with her day, now informed on what weather to expect.

WHAT'S NEXT?

User journeys help give insight to the everyday behaviors of a target user. User Journeys are a high level step-by-step step guide of a person’s story in context of your product/service. A successful User Journey map breaks down the critical broad strokes of your target user’s day as it pertains to the problem you product/service is looking to solve, thus giving a solid framework for determining key product/service touch-points. User Journeys are not to be confused with User Flows. To help you get to your user journey map faster, we created a free User Journey template for your uxonomy followers. Tap the image below to get the free template.
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