Whether you’re focusing on User Experience, Design Thinking, or Service Design, or a combination of the three, one of the most important steps is to understand the customer’s user journey. Whether you’re understanding the current journey in order to optimize, or designing one from zero for a new project, you’ve got to map it out.
User journey mapping is a powerful business-oriented way to create the best user experience from the beginning to the end of engagement. Customer journey maps let businesses visualize, graphically, the entire customer experience from initial contact into a long-term relationship with a product or service. It is important to know what they must build or optimize from a customer’s point of view.
At each stage, you should map the user’s:
- Actions
- Feelings
- Thoughts
- Needs
- Engagement with the system
Takeaway Tips
User journey maps give you:- A detailed visualization of a user’s navigation
- A Map the points a user engages with a system or process
- A way to detect gaps and user pains
- A jump start on solving those problems