Journey Mapping.

This short insight is from of our Methods series: A discussion of useful working practices and ideas for better ideation and execution.  We discuss what each method is, why they are useful, and how to utilize them.

What.

A visualisation of the factors shaping a specific user's experience of a product or service.

Why.

To provide design teams with a broad understanding of the various interactions such as pain points, successes, and elicited emotions that make up a user's experience.  The team can factor in various hurdles and potential issues, and craft solutions that help reach the product goals in a smooth manner.

How To Do It.

1. Document all the elements that contextualize the project's design i.e. relevant stakeholders and their goals.
2. Visualize the sequence of people's behaviors i.e. when and how they use information, when and how they make decisions etc.
3. Categorize those behaviors into a table of 'Phases' and tag them to the corresponding narrative of each persona.
4. Identify behaviors that are shared between personas.
5. Discuss the findings with relevant stakeholders. Incorporate the findings into the project's scope.

Further Discussion.

On the surface, Journey Mapping is a key step to take before the Storyboarding method. Journey Mapping focuses on offering a bird's eye view—essentially a lower fidelity outline of the process; while Storyboarding focuses on offering a higher fidelity outline.

Developing methodology is hugely advantageous, and often multiple methods will logically flow to help a project move sensibly yet at speed. Knowing the fine differences between each step is undoubtably helpful, yet the secret to success is learning how to link up each method into an intelligent workflow.  Each project may differ vastly, but by tackling work in a thoughtful manner, outcomes can stay consistently similar in high quality and aspirations.

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