Journey Mapping 101

ux journey map definition

December 9, 2018 2018-12-09

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Journey maps are a common UX tool. They come in all shapes, sizes, and formats. Depending on the context, they can be used in a variety of ways. This article covers the basics: what a journey map is (and is not), related terminology, common variations, and how we can use journey maps.

In This Article:

Definition of a journey map, key components of a journey map, journey-map variations, why use journey maps.

Definition: A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal.

In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user actions into a timeline. Next, the timeline is fleshed out with user thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative. This narrative is condensed and polished, ultimately leading to a visualization.

Basic Journey Map

The terms ‘user journey map’ and ‘customer journey map’ can be used interchangeably. Both reference a visualization of a person using your product or service.

While the argument can be made that the term ‘customer’ does a disservice to the method (because, especially for certain business-to-business products, not all of end users are technically customers, i.e., product buyers), alignment on what you call the map is far less important than alignment on the content within the map.

Journey maps come in all shapes and sizes. Regardless of how they look, journey maps have the following 5 key elements in common:

Scenario + Expectations

Journey phases, actions, mindsets, and emotions, opportunities.

The actor is the persona or user who experiences the journey. The actor is who the journey map is about — a point of view. Actors usually align with personas and their actions in the map are rooted in data.

Provide one point of view per map in order to build a strong, clear narrative. For example, a university might choose either a student or a faculty member as actor — each would result in different journeys. (To capture both viewpoints, the university will need to build two separate maps, one for each of the two user types.)

The scenario describes the situation that the journey map addresses and is associated with an actor’s goal or need and specific expectations. For example, one scenario could be switching mobile plans to save money, and expectations for it include to easily find all the information needed to make a decision.

Scenarios can be real (for existing products and services) or anticipated — for products that are yet in the design stage.

Journey maps are best for scenarios that involve a sequence of events (such as shopping or taking a trip), describe a process (thus involve a set of transitions over time), or might involve multiple channels .

Journey phases are the different high-level stages in the journey. They provide organization for the rest of the information in the journey map (actions, thoughts, and emotions). The stages will vary from scenario to scenario; each organization will usually have data to help it determine what these phases are for a given scenario.

Here are some examples:

  • For an ecommerce scenario (like buying Bluetooth speakers), the stages can be discover, try, buy, use, seek support.
  • For big (or luxury) purchases (like buying a car), the stages can be engagement, education, research, evaluation, justification.
  • For a business-to-business scenario (like rolling out an internal tool), the stages could be purchase, adoption, retention, expansion, advocacy.

These are behaviors, thoughts, and feelings the actor has throughout the journey and that are mapped within each of the journey phases.

Actions are the actual behaviors and steps taken by users. This component is not meant to be a granular step-by-step log of every discrete interaction. Rather, it is a narrative of the steps the actor takes during that phase.

Mindsets correspond to users’ thoughts, questions, motivations, and information needs at different stages in the journey. Ideally, these are customer verbatims from research.

Emotions are plotted as single line across the journey phases, literally signaling the emotional “ups” and “downs” of the experience. Think of this line as a contextual layer of emotion that tells us where the user is delighted versus frustrated.

Opportunities (along with additional context such as ownership and metrics) are insights gained from mapping; they speak to how the user experience can be optimized. Insights and opportunities help the team draw knowledge from the map:

  • What needs to be done with this knowledge?
  • Who owns what change?
  • Where are the biggest opportunities?
  • How are we going to measure improvements we implement?

Customer Journey Map Example

There are several concepts closely related and thus easily confused with journey maps.

It is important to note that this section is only meant to help your personal understanding and clarification of these terms. It is not advised to debate or attempt to shift a whole organization’s language to abide by the definitions stated here. Instead, use these definitions to guide you towards aspects of another method that your team has not previously considered.

Journey Map vs. Experience Map

Think of an experience map as a parent to a journey map. A journey map has a specific actor (a singular customer or user of a product) and specific scenario (of a product or service), while an experience map is broader on both accounts — a generic human undergoing a general human experience.

The experience map is agnostic of a specific business or product. It’s used for understanding a general human behavior; in contrast, a customer journey map is specific and focused on a particular business or product.

For example, imagine the world before the ridesharing market existed (Uber, Lyft, Bird, or Limebike, to name a few). If we were to create an experience map of how a person gets from one place to another, the map would likely include walking, biking, driving, riding with a friend, public transportation, or calling a taxi. Using that experience map we could then isolate pain points: unknown fares, bad weather, unpredictable timing, paying in cash, and so on. Using these pain points, we would then create a future journey map for specific product: how does a particular type of user call a car using the Lyft app?

Journey Map vs. Service Blueprint

If journey maps are the children to experience maps, then service blueprints are the grandchildren. They visualize the relationships between different service components (such as people or processes) at various touchpoints in a specific customer journey.

Think of service blueprints as a part two to customer journey maps. They are extensions of journey maps, but instead of being focused on the user (and taking the user’s viewpoint), they are focused on the business (and take its perspective).

For the Lyft scenario above, we would take the journey map and expand it with what Lyft does internally to support that customer journey. The blueprint could include matching the user to a driver, contacting the driver, calculating fares, and so on.

Journey Map vs. User Story Map

User stories are used in Agile to plan features or functionalities. Each feature is condensed down to a deliberately brief description from a user’s point of view; the description focuses on what the user wants to do, and how that feature will help. The typical format of a user story is a single sentence: “As a [type of user], I want to [goal], so that [benefit].” For example, “As a checking account holder, I want to deposit checks with my mobile device, so that I don’t have to go to the bank.”

A user story map is a visual version of a user story. For example, take the user story above (“As a checking account holder, I want to deposit checks with my mobile device, so that I don’t have to go to the bank.”) and imagine writing out the different steps that the team plans for the user to take when using that functionality. These steps could be: logging in, beginning deposit, taking picture of check, and entering transaction details. For each step, we can document required features: enabling camera access, scanning check and auto filling numbers, and authorizing signature. In a user story map, these features are written on sticky notes, then arranged based on the product release that each functionality will be added to.

While, at a glance, a user story map may look like a journey map, journey maps are meant for discovery and understanding (think big picture), while user story maps are for planning and implementation (think little picture).

Although a journey map and user story map may contain some of the same pieces, they are used at different points of the process. For example, imagine our journey map for Lyft indicated that a pain point appeared when the user was in a large group. To address it, the team may introduce a multicar-call option. We could create a user story map to break this feature (multicar call) into smaller pieces, so a product-development team could plan release cycles and corresponding tasks.

The benefits of journey maps (and most other UX mappings ) are two-fold. First, the process of creating a map forces conversation and an aligned mental model for the whole team. Fragmented understanding is a widespread problem in organizations because success metrics are siloed; it is no one’s responsibility to look at the entire experience from the user’s standpoint. This shared vision is a critical goal of journey mapping, because, without it, agreement on how to improve customer experience would never take place.

Second, the shared artifact resulting from the mapping can be used to communicate an understanding of your user or service to all involved. Journey maps are effective mechanisms for conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise, and that creates a shared vision. The maps can also become the basis for decision making as the team moves forward.

Journey mapping is a process that provides a holistic view of the customer experience by uncovering moments of both frustration and delight throughout a series of interactions. Done successfully, it reveals opportunities to address customers’ pain points, alleviate fragmentation, and, ultimately, create a better experience for your users.

Additional articles are available, discussing: 

  • When to create customer journey maps
  • The 5-step process
  • Journey mapping in real life

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What is a User Journey Map in UX?

Man creating an user experience journey map

Introduction to UX Journey Mapping

Definition and purpose.

UX journey mapping is a strategic exercise aimed at creating a holistic view of the customer experience by outlining every touchpoint and interaction a customer has with a brand. This visualization helps designers, stakeholders, and team members understand and address the needs, challenges, and opportunities within the customer experience. The purpose of UX journey mapping is not merely to document, but to foster a deep empathy towards the users, enabling teams to design more intuitive and user-centered products and services. Through this comprehensive overview, organizations gain invaluable insights into customer motivations, behaviors, and pain points, which can then be leveraged to enhance customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, business outcomes.

Journey mapping begins with the compilation of data from various sources including market research, user research, and analytics. This information forms the backbone of the journey map, detailing the user’s actions, emotions, and mindset throughout their interaction with the product or service. The exercise of mapping out these interactions encourages a shift from a business-centric to a customer-centric perspective, ensuring that user experience design decisions are grounded in real user needs and preferences rather than assumptions.

The Importance of Journey Maps in UX Design

Journey maps are vital in UX design as they provide a bird’s-eye view of the user experience, highlighting how customers interact with a product or service across multiple channels and touchpoints. This panoramic perspective is critical in identifying friction points that may hinder customer engagement and satisfaction. Moreover, journey maps serve as a shared language among cross-functional teams, facilitating better communication and alignment on the goals and vision of the user experience.

The significance of journey maps extends beyond problem identification; they are pivotal in uncovering hidden opportunities for innovation and improvement. By understanding the customer journey in its entirety, companies can anticipate user needs and craft experiences that exceed expectations, thereby fostering a strong emotional connection with the brand. This connection is the key to building a loyal customer base and achieving competitive advantage in the market.

Components of a Successful Journey Map

Identifying your user persona.

A user persona is a semi-fictional character that represents a segment of your target audience, crafted based on user research and data. Personas are crucial for journey mapping as they ensure the map reflects the experiences of real users rather than hypothetical ones. Each persona should include demographic information, goals, motivations, and pain points, providing a comprehensive profile that guides the mapping process.

Mapping Out User Scenarios and Expectations

User scenarios and expectations set the stage for the journey map, outlining the sequence of actions a user takes to achieve a goal. These scenarios are grounded in user research and feedback, ensuring they accurately represent the tasks and objectives users are trying to accomplish. By mapping these out, designers can visualize the path users take, from initial awareness to final action, and identify potential barriers to completion.

Key Elements of Journey Maps: Actions, Mindsets, and Emotions

The heart of a journey map lies in its ability to depict the user’s actions, mindsets, and emotions at each touchpoint. This triad offers a comprehensive view of the user experience, combining what users do, think, and feel. Actions refer to the steps users take, mindsets to their attitudes and expectations, and emotions to their responses to the interaction. Highlighting these elements in the journey map enables teams to empathize with users and tailor experiences to meet their needs.

Creating Your Journey Map

Steps to build an effective journey map.

The process of building a journey map starts with gathering comprehensive user data through methods like interviews, surveys, and usability testing. This data is then synthesized into a coherent narrative that represents the typical user journey. The mapping process involves several key steps:

  • Define the scope and objectives of the journey map.
  • Identify user personas to focus on.
  • Outline key stages and touchpoints in the user journey.
  • Detail actions, thoughts, and emotions for each stage.
  • Visualize the journey through diagrams or software tools, making it accessible and understandable for all stakeholders.

Tools and Techniques for Journey Mapping

Several tools and techniques facilitate the journey mapping process, ranging from simple pen and paper to advanced software applications. Digital tools like UX mapping software enable dynamic visualization and easy updates, while traditional methods offer simplicity and tangibility. The choice of tool depends on the complexity of the journey and the preferences of the team. Regardless of the method, the aim is to create a clear, actionable map that guides the design and optimization of the user experience.

Analyzing and Utilizing Journey Maps

Identifying pain points and opportunities.

Analyzing a journey map involves looking for patterns and anomalies that indicate pain points or opportunities for enhancement. Pain points are moments of friction or dissatisfaction that detract from the customer experience, while opportunities are areas where improvements can significantly impact satisfaction and engagement. This analysis should be grounded in empathy, considering the emotional journey of the customer as well as the practical aspects of their experience.

Implementing Insights to Enhance User Experience

The ultimate goal of journey mapping is to apply the insights gained to improve the user experience. This may involve redesigning touchpoints, streamlining processes, or introducing new features that address users’ needs more effectively. Implementation should be strategic, prioritizing changes that will have the most significant impact on customer satisfaction and business objectives. Continuous testing and iteration are essential to ensure that modifications truly enhance the user experience.

Advanced Concepts in Journey Mapping

Journey map variations and their applications.

Journey maps can take various forms, each suited to different aspects of the user experience. For example, service blueprints provide a more detailed view of the service delivery process, including backend actions and interactions that support the customer journey. Other variations focus on specific aspects of the experience, such as emotional journey maps that highlight users’ feelings throughout their interaction with a product or service. Choosing the right type of journey map depends on the specific goals and needs of the project.

Integrating Journey Maps into Broader UX Strategy

Journey maps are most effective when integrated into a broader UX strategy. They should inform and be informed by other UX research and design activities, ensuring a cohesive understanding of the user experience. This integration enables a more strategic approach to design and development, where decisions are made with a comprehensive view of the user’s journey, rather than in isolation. The ultimate aim is to create a seamless, engaging user experience that meets users’ needs and exceeds their expectations at every touchpoint.

In conclusion, UX journey mapping is a powerful tool for understanding and improving the customer experience. By visualizing the journey from the customer’s perspective, organizations can identify pain points, uncover opportunities, and design experiences that truly resonate with their users. The journey map is not an end in itself but a means to a more empathetic, user-centered design approach that fosters loyalty, satisfaction, and business success.

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Frequently asked questions.

The stages of the UX user journey typically include Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy. These stages represent the user’s journey from becoming aware of a product or service to becoming a loyal customer and advocate for the brand.

A UX experience map is a visualization that represents the overall experience a user has with a product or service, encompassing all touchpoints and channels. Unlike journey maps, which focus on specific tasks or interactions, experience maps provide a broader view of the user’s relationship with the brand, capturing emotions, motivations, and barriers across different contexts.

To conduct user journey mapping, follow these steps:

  • Define the goals of the mapping exercise and the target persona.
  • Gather data through user research to understand the persona’s needs, goals, and behaviors.
  • Map out the key touchpoints and stages in the user’s journey with the product or service.
  • Identify the user’s actions, thoughts, and emotions at each touchpoint.
  • Analyze the map to identify pain points, opportunities for improvement, and moments of delight.
  • Prioritize and implement changes based on insights gained from the journey map.

Creating a journey map in design thinking involves several steps:

  • Empathize: Conduct research to understand the user’s needs, pain points, and the context of their interactions with the product or service.
  • Define: Clearly articulate the user’s problem or need that the journey map will address.
  • Ideate: Brainstorm the stages, touchpoints, and experiences that comprise the user’s journey.
  • Prototype: Visualize the journey map, detailing the user’s actions, emotions, and challenges at each stage.
  • Test: Share the journey map with stakeholders and users to gather feedback and refine your understanding. Design thinking emphasizes a user-centered approach, ensuring that the journey map reflects real user experiences and drives meaningful improvements.

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A Beginner’s Guide To User Journey Mapping

To design a great product, you need to understand what the user does with it. A user journey map will help you to answer that question for the product’s entire lifecycle.

Nick Babich

“How do people actually use this product?” is a fundamental question that every product creator must answer. In order to do so, product designers need to understand the essence of the whole product experience from the user’s perspective. Fortunately, user journey mapping is an excellent exercise that can shed light on the ways in which the users interact with the product.

What Is a User Journey Map?

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What Design Problems Does a User Journey Map Solve?

A user journey map is an excellent tool for UX designers because i t visualizes how a user interacts with a product and allows designers to see a product from a user’s point of view. This fosters a more user-centric approach to product design, which ultimately leads to a better user experience.

User journey maps help a product team to find the answer to the “What if?” questions. Also, a user journey map can be helpful when a company tracks quantitative key performance indicators . In this case, a user journey map can become a cornerstone for strategic recommendations.

The 8-Step Process of User Journey Mapping

Before creating a user journey map, review the goals of your business or service. This knowledge will help you align the business and user goals.

  • Choose a scope.
  • Create a user persona.
  • Define the scenario and user expectations.
  • Create a list of touchpoints.
  • Take user intention into account.
  • Sketch the journey.
  • Consider a user’s emotional state during each step of the interaction.
  • Validate and refine the user journey.

1. Choose a Scope

The scope of the user journey map can vary from a high-level map that shows end-to-end experience (e.g., creating a smart home in your house) to a more detailed map that focuses on one particular interaction (for instance, adding a new device to your smart home ecosystem).

2. Create a User Persona

Who is your user?

A user journey map is always focused on the experience of one main actor — a user persona who experiences the journey.

A user persona should always be based on information that you have about your target audience. That’s why you should always start with user research . Having solid information about your users will prevent you from making false assumptions.

Gather and analyze all available information about your target audience:

  • Interview your real or potential users.
  • Conduct contextual inquiry. This is an  ethnographic field study that involves in-depth observation of people interacting with your product.
  • Conduct and analyze the results of user surveys.

3. Define the Scenario and User Expectations

The scenario describes the situation that the journey map addresses. It can be real or anticipated. It’s also important to define what expectations a user persona has about the interaction. For example, a scenario could be ordering a taxi using a mobile app with the expectation of getting the car in five minutes or less.

4. Create a List of Touchpoints

Touchpoints are user actions and interactions with the product or business. You need to identify all the main touchpoints and all channels associated with each touchpoint. For example, for the touchpoint “Buy a gift,” the associated channels could be purchasing online or buying in the store.

5. Take User Intention Into Account

What motivates your user to interact with your product? Similarly, w hat problem are users looking to solve when they decide to use your product? Different user segments will have different reasons for adopting it.

Let’s take an e-commerce website. There is a big difference between a user who is just looking around and one who wants to accomplish a specific task like purchasing a particular product.

For each user journey, you need to understand:

  • Motivation. Why are the users trying to do this action?
  • Channels. Where the interaction takes place.
  • Actions . The actual behaviors and steps the users take.
  • Pain points . What are the challenges users are facing?

Also, ensure that the user is getting a consistent experience across all channels.

6. Sketch the Journey

Put together all the information you have and sketch a journey in the format of a step-by-step interaction. Each step demonstrates an experience that the persona has with a service/product or another person.

You can use  a tool called a storyboard,  which is a graphic representation of how a user does something, step by step. It  can help you show how users can interact with a product. Using storyboards, you can visually depict what happens during each step.

7. Consider a User’s Emotional State During Each Step of the Interaction

What does a user feel when interacting with your product?

The products we design need to mirror the states of mind of our users. When we consider a user’s emotional state, this knowledge will help us to connect with them on a human level. That’s why it’s important to add an emotional lane to the user journey map. By visualizing the emotional ups and downs of the experience, you’ll find the areas that require refinement.

You can create an empathy map to better understand how the user feels. Try to mitigate the emotional downs and reinforce emotional ups with good design. 

8. Validate and Refine the User Journey

Journey maps should result in truthful narratives, not fairy tales. Even when a user journey is based on research, you must validate it. Use the information from usability testing sessions and app analytics to be sure that your journey resembles a real use case.

Gather and analyze information about your users on a regular basis. For example, user feedback can be used to improve your understanding of the user journey.

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Map the User Journey

Remember that the goal of making a user journey map is to create a shared vision within your product team and stakeholders. That’s why, once you create a user journey map, you should share it with your peers. Make it possible for everyone in your team to look at the entire experience from the user’s standpoint and draw on this information while crafting a product.

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How to create an effective user journey map

how to create a user journey map

No matter what you’re working on, the key to customer satisfaction and business growth is understanding your users. A user journey map helps you uncover pain points, explore the touchpoints from their perspective, and learn how to improve your product.

Imagine you just launched a new ecommerce platform. Shoppers fill their carts with products, but they abandon their carts before checkout. With a user journey map, you can pinpoint where the customer experience is going wrong, and how to enable more successful checkouts.

Read on to find out:

  • What is a user journey map, and how it captures user flows and customer touchpoints
  • Benefits of user journey mapping to refine UX design and reach business goals
  • How to make user journey maps in five steps, using FigJam’s user journey map template

What is a user journey map?

Think about the path a user takes to explore your product or website. How would you design the best way to get there? User journey maps (or user experience maps) help team members and stakeholders align on user needs throughout the design process, starting with user research. As you trace users' steps through your user flows, notice: Where do users get lost, backtrack, or drop off?

User journey maps help you flag pain points and churn, so your team can see where the user experience may be confusing or frustrating for your audience. Then you can use your map to identify key customer touchpoints and find opportunities for optimization.

How to read a user journey map

Most user journey maps are flowcharts or grids showing the user experience from end to end. Consider this real-life journey map example of a freelancing app from Figma's design community. The journey starts with a buyer persona needing freelance services, and a freelancer looking for a gig. Ideally, the journey ends with service delivery and payment—but customer pain points could interrupt the flow.

Start your user journey map with FigJam

5 key user journey map phases.

Take a look at another Figma community user journey template , which uses a simple grid. Columns capture the five key stages of the user journey: awareness, consideration, decision, purchase, and retention (see below). Rows show customer experiences across these stages—their thoughts, feelings, and pain points. These experiences are rated as good, neutral, and bad.

To see how this works, consider a practical example. Suppose a new pet parent wants to learn how to train their puppy and discovers your dog-training app. Here's how you might map out the five key user journey stages:

  • Awareness. The user sees a puppy-training video on social media with a link to your product website. They're intrigued—a positive experience.
  • Consideration. The user visits your product website to preview your app. If they can't find a video preview easily, this could be a neutral or negative experience.
  • Decision. The user clicks on a link to the app store and reads reviews of your app and compares it to others. They might think your app reviews are good, but your price is high—a negative or neutral experience.
  • Purchase. The user buys your app and completes the onboarding process. If this process is smooth, it's a positive experience. If not, the customer experience could turn negative at this point.
  • Retention. The user receives follow-up emails featuring premium puppy-training services or special offers. Depending on their perception of these emails, the experience can range from good (helpful support) to bad (too much spam).

2 types of user journey maps—and when to use them

User journey maps are helpful across the product design and development process, especially at two crucial moments: during product development and for UX troubleshooting. These scenarios call for different user journey maps: current-state and future-state.

Current-state user journey maps

A current-state user journey map shows existing customer interactions with your product. It gives you a snapshot of what's happening, and pinpoints how to enhance the user experience.

Take the puppy training app, for example. A current-state customer journey map might reveal that users are abandoning their shopping carts before making in-app purchases. Look at it from your customers' point of view: Maybe they aren't convinced their credit cards will be secure or the shipping address workflow takes too long. These pain points show where you might tweak functionality to boost user experience and build customer loyalty.

Future-state user journey maps

A future-state user journey map is like a vision board : it shows the ideal customer journey, supported by exceptional customer experiences. Sketch out your best guesses about user behavior on an ideal journey, then put them to the test with usability testing. Once you've identified your north star, you can explore new product or site features that will optimize user experience.

How to make a user journey map in 5 steps

To start user journey mapping, follow this step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Define user personas and goals.

Gather user research and data like demographics, psychographics, and shopping behavior to create detailed customer personas representing your target audience.  In your dog-training app example, one key demographic may be parents. What’s their goal? It isn't necessarily "hire a puppy trainer"—it could be "teach kids how to interact with a puppy."

Step 2: Identify customer touch points.

Locate the points along the user journey where the user encounters or interacts with your product. In the dog training app example, touchpoints might include social media videos, app website, app store category search (e.g., pets), app reviews, app store checkout, in-app onboarding, and app customer support.

Step 3: Visualize journey phases.

Create a visual representation of user journey phases across key touchpoints with user flow diagrams , flowcharts , or storyboards .

Step 4: Capture user actions and responses.

For each journey stage, capture the user story: at this juncture, what are they doing, thinking, and feeling ? This could be simple, such as: "Potential customer feels frustrated when the product image takes too long to load."

Step 5: Validate and iterate.

Finally, show your map to real users. Get honest feedback about what works and what doesn’t with user testing , website metrics , or surveys . To use the dog-training app example, you might ask users: Are they interested in subscribing to premium how-to video content by a professional dog trainer? Apply user feedback to refine your map and ensure it reflects customer needs.

Jumpstart your user journey map with FigJam

Lead your team's user journey mapping effort with FigJam, the online collaborative whiteboard for brainstorming, designing, and idea-sharing. Choose a user journey map template from Figma's design community as your guide. With Figma's drag-and-drop design features, you can quickly produce your own professional, presentation-ready user journey map.

Pro tip: Use a service blueprint template to capture behind-the-scenes processes that support the user journey, bridging the gap between user experience and service delivery.

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What is ux journey mapping.

12 min read What is a user journey map, and how can it help your business to improve its outcomes? Create your own user journey map and understand customer journey mapping differences with our full guide.

What is user journey mapping?

A user journey map is a visual representation of what a user must do to achieve a goal, and outlines the experience they have with your brand. Their goal might be to complete a purchase, find information, or sign up to a service. Whatever the user’s goal is, a journey map can help businesses to figure out where there are pain points and improve the user or customer experience.

A journey map is best used for outlining complex journeys that involve either multiple events, a particular process with several stages, or involve more than one channel. User journey maps can help to clarify these complicated journeys and ensure that the process is smooth and fulfilling for everyone.

Free eBook: The ultimate guide to customer journey mapping

User journey map example

A user journey map / UX journey map vs a customer journey map

Sometimes, the phrases “user journey mapping” or “UX journey mapping are used interchangeably with “customer journey mapping”. In most cases, this is accurate – the users of your website are your customers, so creating a customer journey map will effectively be a UX journey map. However, this doesn’t cover all scenarios. For example:

Customer journey maps don’t cover all users

Customer journey maps are useful for understanding the customer experience you offer, but what if your users aren’t customers? Internal and external stakeholders, researchers, employees, and more might need to find information on your website, even though they’re not customers.

Customer journey mapping is usually tied to a financial goal

Customer journey mapping usually has a financial goal, with a monetary transaction at the end of it (even if the initial goal isn’t, such as a free sign up to a service). A user journey map doesn’t necessarily tie into financial goals – it might be to provide information, for example.

UX journey maps are usually for UX design thinking

A customer journey map is a tool that can be used for many different areas of business – sales journeys, marketing journeys and more can be mapped out. However, a UX journey map is usually used for the UX design process, and might involve more technical information such as website usage data.

Why is a UX journey map important for business?

Getting the complete picture and a deep understanding of your user or customer journey allows your business to understand where problems lie and where positive action can be taken.

Defining your users’ needs, issues, and the scale of their interactions with your brand gives you the ability to fix pain points and develop new pathways for users that you hadn’t thought of before.

For example, perhaps your business has taken a desktop-first approach, offering a great experience for desktop users at the expense of creating a mobile-responsive design. By creating a user journey map, you might see that your users are actually coming in via mobile searches – and with 58.33% of global users choosing mobile , this is quite likely. Your UX journey map gives you a better idea of how to win over your mobile users and provide them with a better user experience.

Why user experience matters

Creating a user experience that meets and exceeds expectations allows you to:

  • Create positive feelings and a stronger connection with your users. Fully connected users are on average 52% more valuable than users that are highly satisfied. By offering a positive, connective experience, you can reap the benefits.
  • Develop loyal users who return time and time again. With 88% of online users being less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience, it’s important to cultivate loyalty by understanding where your user journeys are failing to impress.
  • Invest in your business with a proven ROI. According to Forrester, every dollar invested in UX brings $100 in return on average, an ROI of 9,900%.
  • Stand out from the competition. Your journey map might not be too different from a competitor’s – but what will make you stand out is the exceeding of the usual expectations at each stage of the user or customer experience.

Building out a journey map or multiple journey maps for your users allows you to create a deeper relationship with your audience, enabling them to have an intuitive, cohesive experience with your brand.

Components of a thorough user journey map

There are several key elements of a user journey map that are vital for creating an effective service blueprint. You can get started with our basic customer journey map template here , or read on for a more in-depth approach.

customer/user journey map

1. The specific user

You will likely create a variety of user journey maps. Each one will require you to focus on a specific user and their journey through the assets you’ve created.

Your specific user for each journey map will usually tie into a customer persona. Your user persona should be based on data you’ve collected about your business, such as who is buying your products, has a stake in your business, or is employed by you.

For example, you might have a user who is a senior team member in your business, and a user who is a new employee – both might need different journey maps.

2. The scenario and the goals

On journey maps, the scenario is the situation that the user finds themselves in, with a specific goal in mind. For example, say your user is a customer – the scenario might be that they’re buying a product, with the goal of completing a transaction.

You don’t have to create a user journey map for an existing scenario or goal – perhaps you’re looking to map out a process that’s in the works for a future product launch.

3. User journey stages or phases

Your user journey map is now broken down into stages or phases. This is the high-level view of your user’s scenario, broken down into individual interactions or customer touch points.

For example, if you were selling a product to a customer to fix a particular problem, your stages might be the following:

4. Actions, attitudes and emotions

Within each user journey stage, you will need to map out the actions a user will take; their mindset or attitude toward this journey stage; and the user’s emotional state.

For example, for the “Discovery” phase in the product sale example above, you might note:

  • Actions : Use online search engine to find information, visit website, read blog article
  • Attitude: Searching for help for a problem
  • Emotions: Frustrated with the problem they’re trying to solve, happy at potentially finding a solution

5. Opportunities

When you’ve mapped out the above on your user journey map or customer journey map, you’ll start to see where you have the opportunity to create change. For example, perhaps you’ve seen that you lose lots of users at the Purchase stage. Is there a problem with your purchase system? What incentive could you offer to get users over the hurdle?

Ask yourself:

  • What can you do with the knowledge you’ve gained from this journey map?
  • What are the main opportunities that should be tackled first for the best ROI?

6. Internal ownership

Once you’ve identified the opportunities, you can then assign internal ownership. Without assigning specific actions and responsibilities, improving your customer experience or user experience can easily fall under the radar.

Your customer journeys or user journeys outlined in your journey map might touch upon multiple parts of your organization. For example, the customer journey outlined in this example involves product design, marketing, sales and frontline customer service departments. Each area of your business will need to take action for the best user or customer experience.

7. Measurement

To understand how your user journey has improved, you’ll need to determine the metrics each improvement will be judged against. This might be customer satisfaction (CSAT) , sales numbers, Net Promoter Scores (NPS ), or positive user reviews – whichever you feel best represents an improvement for your users’ experience. It’s best to create KPIs to track over time to see how your actions contribute towards tangible change in the user experience.

How to build a user journey map

Now you understand how to create a customer journey map or user journey map, how do you gather all the data you need to flesh it out?

The main sources of useful information will be:

  • User/ customer research , such as market research
  • Unsolicited user data, such as web traffic numbers or social media listening data
  • Solicited user data, such as data from user interviews or customer surveys
  • Operational data, such as financial transaction data

Qualitative UX research

Qualitative user research helps you to understand the “why” behind user’s actions. How was your customer feeling in the moment when they interacted with you? Which emotion drove them to move into the next phase of your user journey map?

This type of user research involves collecting non-numerical data, such as opinions or feelings. To do this, you might decide to:

  • Host user interviews/customer interviews to discover pain points and understand the drivers behind users and customers’ experience
  • Perform user research through surveys to gather information on experiences at all user and customer touchpoints
  • Conduct research to understand why specific demographics might act in a specific way during their user journey
  • Observe users in action, either in person or through screen recordings, to get contextual information on what happens during the journey
  • Create an empathy map, outlining what a user says, thinks, does and feels, for each stage of the user or customer journey

Quantitative UX research

Quantitative user research is a more structured approach to gathering user information for your journey map. Rather than the “why” behind your user or customer’s experience, it illustrates the “what.” What are your users doing? How often are they doing it? How much do they spend on it?

  • Get insights from internal data to understand actions, such as what happens during user pain points or how often your customers return for another purchase
  • Test the usability and accessibility of your website to understand if there are technical drivers behind actions
  • Use user research methods such as mouse heatmaps, funnel analysis, analytics and more to understand user behavior

With all this information, you can then create user personas to help kickstart your user journey mapping and UX design process.

Create effective UX journey maps with Qualtrics

Get a deeper understanding of your users and build better customer experiences with user journey maps, enabled by Qualtrics. Build multiple in-depth user journey maps, populated with your organization’s collated data and third-party inputs, for better UX design and customer experience.

Qualtrics platform

With Qualtrics XM for Customer Experience , you’ll be able to:

  • Outline individual user and customer journeys with input from across your business
  • Automatically surface emotions, drivers and sentiments in unsolicited and solicited data with iQ™
  • Deliver insights and actions automatically to key parties within your organization to enable positive change
  • Create UX designs that meet and exceed user expectations

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How to design a customer journey map (A step-by-step guide)

A customer journey map is a visual representation of how a user interacts with your product. Learn how to create a customer journey map in this practical step-by-step guide.

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Successful UX design is rooted in empathy. The best designers are able to step into their users’ shoes and imagine what they think, feel, and experience as they interact with a product or service. 

One of the most effective ways to foster user empathy and consider different perspectives is to create customer journey maps—otherwise known as customer journey maps.

If you’re new to journey mapping, look no further than this guide. We’ll explain:

  • What is a customer journey map?

Why create customer journey maps?

When to create customer journey maps, what are the elements of a customer journey map, how to create a customer journey map (step-by-step).

If you want to skip straight to the how-to guide, just use the clickable menu to jump ahead. Otherwise, let’s begin with a definition. 

[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]

What is a customer journey map? 

A customer journey map (otherwise known as a user journey map) is a visual representation of how a user or customer interacts with your product. It maps out the steps they go through to complete a specific task or to achieve a particular goal—for example, purchasing a product from an e-commerce website or creating a profile on a dating app. 

Where does their journey begin? What’s their first point of interaction with the product? What actions and steps do they take to reach their end goal? How do they feel at each stage? 

You can answer all of those questions with a user journey map.

user journey map

A user journey map template from Miro . 

Creating customer journey maps helps to:

  • Centre the end user and foster empathy. Creating a user/customer journey map requires you to step into the end user’s shoes and experience the product from their perspective. This reminds you to consider the user at all times and fosters empathy.
  • Expose pain-points in the user experience. By viewing the product from the user’s perspective, you quickly become aware of pain-points or stumbling blocks within the user experience. Based on this insight, you can improve the product accordingly.
  • Uncover design opportunities. User journey maps don’t just highlight pain-points; they can also inspire new ideas and opportunities. As you walk in your end user’s shoes, you might think “Ah! An [X] feature would be great here!”
  • Get all key stakeholders aligned. User journey maps are both visual and concise, making them an effective communication tool. Anybody can look at a user journey map and instantly understand how the user interacts with the product. This helps to create a shared understanding of the user experience, building alignment among multiple stakeholders. 

Ultimately, user journey maps are a great way to focus on the end user and understand how they experience your product. This helps you to create better user experiences that meet your users’ needs. 

User journey maps can be useful at different stages of the product design process. 

Perhaps you’ve got a fully-fledged product that you want to review and optimise, or completely redesign. You can create journey maps to visualise how your users currently interact with the product, helping you to identify pain-points and inform the next iteration of the product. 

You can also create user journey maps at the ideation stage. Before developing new ideas, you might want to visualise them in action, mapping out potential user journeys to test their validity. 

And, once you’ve created user journey maps, you can use them to guide you in the creation of wireframes and prototypes . Based on the steps mapped out in the user journey, you can see what touchpoints need to be included in the product and where. 

No two user journey maps are the same—you can adapt the structure and content of your maps to suit your needs. But, as a rule, user journey maps should include the following: 

  • A user persona. Each user journey map represents the perspective of just one user persona. Ideally, you’ll base your journey maps on UX personas that have been created using real user research data.
  • A specific scenario. This describes the goal or task the journey map is conveying—in other words, the scenario in which the user finds themselves. For example, finding a language exchange partner on an app or returning a pair of shoes to an e-commerce company.
  • User expectations. The goal of a user journey map is to see things from your end user’s perspective, so it’s useful to define what their expectations are as they complete the task you’re depicting.
  • High-level stages or phases. You’ll divide the user journey into all the broad, high-level stages a user goes through. Imagine you’re creating a user journey map for the task of booking a hotel via your website. The stages in the user’s journey might be: Discover (the user discovers your website), Research (the user browses different hotel options), Compare (the user weighs up different options), Purchase (the user books a hotel).
  • Touchpoints. Within each high-level phase, you’ll note down all the touchpoints the user comes across and interacts with. For example: the website homepage, a customer service agent, the checkout page.
  • Actions. For each stage, you’ll also map out the individual actions the user takes. This includes things like applying filters, filling out user details, and submitting payment information.
  • Thoughts. What is the user thinking at each stage? What questions do they have? For example: “I wonder if I can get a student discount” or “Why can’t I filter by location?”
  • Emotions. How does the user feel at each stage? What emotions do they go through? This includes things like frustration, confusion, uncertainty, excitement, and joy.
  • Pain-points. A brief note on any hurdles and points of friction the user encounters at each stage.
  • Opportunities. Based on everything you’ve captured in your user journey map so far, what opportunities for improvement have you uncovered? How can you act upon your insights and who is responsible for leading those changes? The “opportunities” section turns your user journey map into something actionable. 

Here’s how to create a user journey map in 6 steps:

  • Choose a user journey map template (or create your own)
  • Define your persona and scenario
  • Outline key stages, touchpoints, and actions 
  • Fill in the user’s thoughts, emotions, and pain-points
  • Identify opportunities 
  • Define action points and next steps

Let’s take a closer look.

[GET CERTIFIED IN UI DESIGN]

1. Choose a user journey map template (or create your own)

The easiest way to create a user journey map is to fill in a ready-made template. Tools like Miro , Lucidchart , and Canva all offer user/customer journey map templates that you can fill in directly or customise to make your own. 

Here’s an example of a user journey map template from Canva:

canva user journey map

2. Define your persona and scenario

Each user journey map you create should represent a specific user journey from the perspective of a specific user persona. So: determine which UX persona will feature in your journey map, and what scenario they’re in. In other words, what goal or task are they trying to complete?

Add details of your persona and scenario at the top of your user journey map. 

3. Outline key stages, actions, and touchpoints

Now it’s time to flesh out the user journey itself. First, consider the user scenario you’re conveying and think about how you can divide it into high-level phases. 

Within each phase, identify the actions the user takes and the touchpoints they interact with. 

Take, for example, the scenario of signing up for a dating app. You might divide the process into the following key phases: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Service, and Advocacy . 

Within the Awareness phase, possible user actions might be: Hears about the dating app from friends, Sees an Instagram advert for the app, Looks for blog articles and reviews online. 

4. Fill in the user’s thoughts, emotions, and pain-points

Next, step even further into your user’s shoes to imagine what they may be thinking and feeling at each stage, as well as what pain-points might get in their way. 

To continue with our dating app example, the user’s thoughts during the Awareness phase might be: “ I’ve never used online dating before but maybe I should give this app a try…”

As they’re new to online dating, they may be feeling both interested and hesitant. 

While looking for blog articles and reviews, the user struggles to find anything helpful or credible. This can be added to your user journey map under “pain-points”. 

5. Identify opportunities

Now it’s time to turn your user pain-points into opportunities. In our dating app example, we identified that the user wanted to learn more about the app before signing up but couldn’t find any useful articles or reviews online.

How could you turn this into an opportunity? You might start to feature more dating app success stories on the company blog. 

Frame your opportunities as action points and state who will be responsible for implementing them.  

Here we’ve started to fill out the user journey map template for our dating app scenario:

dating app customer journey map

Repeat the process for each phase in the user journey until your map is complete.

6. Define action points and next steps 

User journey maps are great for building empathy and getting you to see things from your user’s perspective. They’re also an excellent tool for communicating with stakeholders and creating a shared understanding around how different users experience your product. 

Once your user journey map is complete, be sure to share it with all key stakeholders and talk them through the most relevant insights. 

And, most importantly, turn those insights into clear action points. Which opportunities will you tap into and who will be involved? How will your user journey maps inform the evolution of your product? What are your next steps? 

Customer journey maps in UX: the takeaway

That’s a wrap for user journey maps! With a user journey map template and our step-by-step guide, you can easily create your own maps and use them to inspire and inform your product design process. 

For more how-to guides, check out:

  • The Ultimate Guide to Storyboarding in UX
  • How to Design Effective User Surveys for UX Research
  • How to Conduct User Interviews

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How to Do UX Journey Mapping: A Detailed Guide

Learn the art of UX journey mapping with our in-depth guide. Discover what UX journey maps are, how they differ from customer journey maps, and the key steps to create one. Explore valuable user journey map tools and get a free template to kickstart your journey mapping journey.

ux journey map definition

Imagine a world where your favorite apps and websites are so easy to use, you feel like they were designed just for you. You can find what you're looking for in seconds, and the whole experience is seamless delight. That's the power of User Experience (UX) at its best.

One of the processes behind creating such exceptional UX is UX journey mapping .

UX journey mapping is a process of understanding your users' needs, goals, and pain points, and then using that information to design experiences that are seamless, efficient, and enjoyable.

ux journey map definition

This article will explore:

  • What is a UX journey map and why is it important?
  • The role of UX journey mapping in design thinking
  • How to create a UX journey map
  • The difference between user and customer journey maps
  • The best user journey mapping tools out there
  • A handy template for your own user journey maps!

So whether you're a seasoned designer honing your skills or a newcomer eager to unlock the mysteries of UX Journey Mapping, come on in, the water’s fiine..

What is a UX Journey Map?

UX journey maps and customer journey maps are often used interchangeably, but there is a subtle but important difference between the two.

A UX journey (user journey) map is a visual representation of the steps that a user takes to achieve a goal with a product or service. It includes the user's thoughts, feelings, and pain points at each step.

Customer journey maps are a powerful tool for understanding your customers' needs, motivations, and obstacles. By mapping out the customer journey from start to finish, you can identify key touchpoints, opportunities for improvement, and areas where your customers are struggling.

User Journey Maps vs. Customer Journey Maps

User journey maps:.

  • Map out the steps that a user takes to achieve a goal , along with their thoughts, feelings, and pain points at each step.
  • Focus on the user's experience with a specific product or service.
  • Are used by product teams, designers, and developers to understand the user experience and identify opportunities for improvement.

Customer journey maps:

  • Map out all of the interactions that a customer has with a brand , including marketing, sales, customer service, and support.
  • Focus on the customer's relationship with a brand across all touchpoints, from awareness to post-purchase.
  • Are used by product teams, designers, developers, marketing teams, sales teams, and customer service teams to understand the customer experience and identify opportunities for improvement.

In other words, user journey maps focus on a specific task or goal, while customer journey maps focus on the overall customer experience.

Imagine your customer as a traveler on a roadtrip. They have a destination in mind, but they need help getting there. Your customer journey map is a roadmap, guiding your customers along the way.

customer journey map example for a SaaS product

As your customers drives down on the route you’ve etched out, they will encounter different touchpoints, such as your website, social media pages, customer service team, and product. At each touchpoint, your customers will have certain needs, motivations, and obstacles.

Your customer journey map should help you to understand the following:

  • Customer needs: What are your customers trying to achieve at each touchpoint?
  • Customer motivations: What is driving your customers to take action at each touchpoint?
  • Customer obstacles: What challenges are your customers facing at each touchpoint?

Once you have a good understanding of your customers' needs, motivations, and obstacles, you can start to identify opportunities for improvement.

For example, if you find that many of your customers are struggling to find the information they need on your website, you can make improvements to the navigation or add more search functionality.

Customer journey maps are most effective when they are based on real data, such as customer interviews and observations.

When possible, use your customer journey map to document and summarize interviews and observations with real people. This will help you to get a more accurate understanding of your customers' experiences.

User Journey Mapping in Design Thinking

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process for solving problems and creating new ideas that are informed by user needs. UX Journey Mapping is a powerful tool to assist with this.

User journey maps are a powerful tool for design teams because they help teams to understand users, define problems, ideate solutions, prototype solutions, and test solutions.

Here is an example of how UX Journey Mapping can be used in design thinking:

A product team is working on designing a new mobile app. They start by creating a UX Journey Map to understand the current user experience. The UX Journey Map reveals that users are frustrated with the long and complicated checkout process.

The team then uses the UX Journey Map to ideate ways to improve the checkout process. They come up with a number of ideas, such as reducing the number of steps in the checkout process and allowing users to checkout with a single click.

The team then creates a prototype of the new checkout process and tests it with users. They can move faster through the new checkout process, but they identify a couple of small glitches with the time taken for the payment gateway page to load. 

The team iterates on the prototype, and fixes the glitches. They tests it with users again. Ultimately, the app has a checkout process that is significantly faster and easier to use. Hallelujah!

How to Create Journey Map

1. define the objective.

What do you want to learn from your journey map? Are you trying to understand how users interact with your product or service? Are you trying to identify opportunities to improve the customer experience? 

2. Identify your persona

Who is the user that you are mapping? What are their needs, goals, and pain points? The more you know about your persona, the more accurate your journey map will be.

3. Identify touchpoints

Mark down all the interaction points the user/customer has with the product, like website visits, Facebook ads or customer service calls. Include everything from marketing and sales to customer service and support.

4. Gather the data ‍

Collect data about user interactions at each touchpoint, and what they thought of it. How did users feel about the new payment gateway platform? Did everyone find the new mobile app UI equally accessible? What did customers think of the placing of the support form on the website homepage? This information can be gathered from surveys, interviews, analytics, and customer support records.

5. Create a timeline

Construct a timeline that represents the user's journey from the initial touchpoint to the final one. It’s usually linear, and the foundational for the UX journey map.

6. Plot feelings and actions

Fill in the emotions and actions the user/customer undertakes at each touchpoint? Does the viewer feel frustrated when they try to find something to watch on the video streaming platform website? Add an angry emoji there. Also minutely map out the actions required at each stage - clicking, scrolling, password entry etc..

7. Identify pain points

This is when the picture starts to emerge. Based on the data you have just filled in, write down the parts where the users experience challenges, or highs. What makes them happy, and what doesn’t?

8. Visualize the journey map

Put it all together in a pretty Figjam board, or an actual whiteboard! Create a visual representation of the journey map with symbols, emojis, arrows and digital tools. We’ve created a gorgeous template for you and linked it below, to fast-forward through this step.

9. Share the Journey

Once you have analyzed the journey, share it with your team and stakeholders. The user journey may involve multiple efforts in your organization, so inform stakeholders if they can help make the buyer journey more customer-centric. 

10. Iterate and improve

A UX journey map is an constantly-evolving document, so update it often. If the product team makes changes to a particular feature or user touchpoint, update it with all the feedback about it on the map. User journeys change over time, your ux journey map should reflect that.

Tips to Create Effective Customer Journey Map

Be specific ‍.

The more specific you are, the more accurate and useful your journey map will be. For example, instead of mapping out the user journey for "purchasing a product," map out the user journey for "purchasing a new pair of shoes from our website."

Be user-centered ‍

The journey map should be from the user's perspective, not your own. Focus on the user's thoughts, feelings, and pain points at each step of the journey.

Be visual ‍

Journey maps are most effective when they are visual. Use diagrams, illustrations, and other visuals to represent the user journey.

Be collaborative ‍

Journey maps should be created collaboratively with your team and stakeholders. This will help to ensure that everyone is aligned on the user experience and that you are all working towards the same goals.

Use customer research ‍

Ask customers how they found out about your company and how they interact with your brand through user interviews. Also psst, Looppanel can help automatically transcribe and take notes of your user interviews,

Update and improve the customer journey map ‍

Your customer journey map may change and evolve over time. Keep your customer journey map current by storing all of your customer research data in one place. This makes it easy to find areas where the customer experience can be enhanced.

Ask for feedback from real customers ‍

You should base your customer journey map on data and interviews from actual customers, but you should also check if your map reflects their true experience. Get feedback from customers with user interviews, surveys etc. on improving the experience.

User Journey Map Tools

There are a number of user journey map tools available, both free and paid. Some of the most popular tools include:

Miro is a collaborative whiteboard tool that can be used to create user journey maps. It has a variety of templates and features to help you create visually appealing and informative journey maps.

Mural is another collaborative whiteboard tool that can be used to create user journey maps. It offers a variety of features to help you create and share journey maps with your team and stakeholders.

Lucidchart ‍

Lucidchart is a diagramming and visualization tool that can be used to create user journey maps. It offers a variety of templates and features to help you create professional-looking journey maps.

Google Slides ‍

Google Slides is a presentation tool that can be used to create user journey maps. There are a variety of templates and features on Google slides to help you create visually appealing and informative journey maps.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is another presentation tool that can be used to create user journey maps. With different templates and features on Microsoft PowerPoint, you can create professional-looking journey maps.

Figma is a design tool that can be used to create user journey maps. Figma offers a variety of features to help you create visually appealing and interactive journey maps.

In addition to these general-purpose tools, there are also a number of user journey map tools that are specifically designed for UX professionals.

UXPressia ‍

UXPressia is a user journey mapping tool that offers a variety of features to help UX professionals create user journey maps, including persona management, journey mapping templates, and collaboration tools.

JourneyMap ‍

JourneyMap is a user journey mapping tool that offers a variety of features to help UX professionals create user journey maps, including persona management, journey mapping templates, and reporting tools.

Smaply is also a user journey mapping tool that offers a variety of features to help UX professionals create user journey maps, including persona management, journey mapping templates, and collaboration tools.

User Journey Map Template

ux journey map definition

To help you get started, here's a simple template to build your next user/customer journey map with. Happy mapping!

Download a FREE template for your own user/customer journey map here.

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Journey mapping in UX design

Last updated

21 February 2023

Reviewed by

Jean Kaluza

Customers are essential to the success of a business. Without them, the company would cease to exist. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand the stages customers go through when interacting with a brand. You can use a journey map to visualize this across all digital channels over time.

If you’re looking to create user-friendly, intuitive experiences for your customers, journey mapping is a key part of UX design . Find out everything you need to know about journey mapping in this guide.

  • What are the four stages of journey mapping?

A journey map should accurately represent your user’s experience from when they first find you and start to interact with you, through to them making a purchase and becoming a loyal customer.

The stages of a journey map will therefore depend on your product. The four stages of a customer’s buying cycle are:

During this stage, customers are looking for solutions to a problem. They become aware of your brand, services, or products via advertisements or other marketing vehicles.

Social media is a powerful tool that companies use to boost awareness. During the awareness stage, the brand should share pertinent information, such as business goals, ethics, and values.

Consideration

At this stage, customers consider the brand against similar companies offering the same products and services.

You need to give potential customers a deeper understanding of what you’re offering and why your brand is a better choice. They may engage with the business by signing up for a newsletter or visiting a brick-and-mortar store.

Customers have decided what they want and make a purchase. They have gathered the information they need before committing to a purchase. They may find this information in email confirmations, FAQs on billing and shipping, and online ordering pages.

Customer loyalty

This is the last stage, after customers have made their purchase and are evaluating the overall experience. This phase is about creating loyal, returning clients by offering membership programs and future discounts.

  • How to make a simple journey map

Each customer journey is unique, so journey maps vary depending on the scenarios experienced by customers. Although the maps vary widely, the same steps are involved in creating them.

Let’s look at a step-by-step approach to making a simple journey map.

Step 1: Scope definition

The first step is to clearly define your goals. What are you hoping to achieve from this journey map? Do you want to make a particular aspect of the purchasing cycle more user-friendly? Or are you trying to find out why potential customers don’t follow through with a purchase?

Setting a goal will provide guide rails around the particular customer path you’re trying to understand. This will drive UX designers throughout the journey.

Step 2: Create user personas

Next, get a grasp of who your customers are. Gather information to create different personas to improve your knowledge of the different segments of your target audience. This helps you to:

Define your target market

Create better products and services

Appeal to them through your marketing

Step 3: List channels and touchpoints

Touchpoints are points of interaction between the user and the product. The channels may be through social media platforms, the path a user would take through your product, and other supporting applications or communication necessary to complete their goal.

List all the channels and touchpoints in the journey scenarios. Identify the touchpoints with higher engagement and those that need to be optimized.

Step 4: Collect customer feedback

Gathering customer feedback helps gauge how your users feel about your product or service. Methods used to gather information include:

Questionnaires

Rating systems

Your aim is to see your product through the eyes of your customers.

Step 5: Define pain points and points of friction

Using the customer feedback you gathered in the previous stage, identify gaps in the user journey that make it difficult to move through stages. Identify when they happen and what triggers them. 

This will help you to smooth out potential friction points in the customer journey.

Step 6: Improve and re-evaluate

The last step is to improve the overall experience of your customers. Once you have identified the pain points, opportunities, and goal metrics, brainstorm solutions to the identified flaws and implement necessary changes.

Regularly conduct further research and re-evaluate the customer journey.

  • What are the elements of a journey map?

A journey map is made up of the following elements:

Persona (actor)

The persona is the one who experiences the journey; it may be a customer or a product user. Depending on the scenario, it could be a group or an individual.

The scenario is what the actor or persona is trying to achieve. A scenario describes the situation that the journey addresses. It primarily includes goals and expectations and can be real or imaginary.

Journey phase

Phases are the different stages of a journey, from awareness to purchasing and beyond. In each phase, try to visualize how you can meet the customer’s goals.

Thoughts and emotions

This refers to how the customer feels as they interact with your brand. Thoughts help the UX designer understand what the customer is experiencing, for example, relief, anxiousness, or frustration. Emotions allow the UX designer to focus on encouraging positive thoughts.

User actions

The action element details what the actor does in each phase to achieve their goal. It defines the actual steps taken by an actor throughout the journey.

Opportunities

This element offers the brand a chance to improve the customer's experience . They are insights gained from journey mapping and used to make informed decisions.

  • Why are journey maps important?

Journey mapping brings the following benefits for a company.

Customer-centric philosophy

Using journey maps, UX designers can focus on how customers feel and think about the product being designed.

Journey maps help businesses understand their customers better, resulting in improved decision-making.

Broader business perspective

A journey map helps you to visualize situations experienced by a customer when interacting with your brand. The goal of a journey map is to remove obstacles and make the purchasing process intuitive and efficient.

Customer journey mapping helps a business owner gain an overview of their product or service from multiple viewpoints.

Improved customer experience

A journey map is the first step toward gaining a deeper understanding of customer engagement and fostering the flow of customer experience. It can help you to smooth out the customer experience and personalize it across all touchpoints.

Identification of opportunities

In complex business environments, gaps and breakdowns are common. Mapping out how a user interacts with your brand and/or product may reveal design flaws and areas that need change. 

By charting the entire process, a journey map helps identify gaps and opportunities for improvement that will enhance customer experience.

Competitive advantage

Journey mapping helps a company eliminate design flaws and make its product stand out. Once a UX designer has improved customer experience, this becomes a differentiation factor among competitors in the market.

  • How does a customer journey map help?

A detailed and well-researched journey map will help you to: 

Build a customer-centric organization

Improve customer retention

Identify unmet opportunities that competitors may have missed

Understand the target audience

Align brand position with target market needs and expectations

Meet customer expectations

Understand different buyer personas

Optimize customer onboarding process

  • How much does journey mapping cost?

The cost of journey mapping varies widely. The pricing depends on who’s doing it, how much research you want to do, and the complexity of the customer's journey.

  • Designing journey maps

Journey maps are unique since they should represent whatever product or service they emulate. Variations of journey maps include:

Experience map

Empathy map

Service blueprint

You can use a third-party tool to build a well-designed journey map, such as:

Omnigraffle

However, there are no rules around what you use to build your journey map and can build it using a whiteboard, PDF format, and even Microsoft Paint. As long as it’s an accurate representation of the user’s journey, that’s what counts.

Experience maps

Experience maps are a zoom-out from journey maps. While journey maps represent a single persona’s behavior at each phase of the customer journey, experience maps can include multi-players that may interact with that user, additional products that customers typically use, or perhaps entirely different methods outside technology that users engage with to complete their goals.

Empathy maps

Empathy maps are used to understand customer personas . They do not follow a particular sequence of events along the journey. Empathy maps are divided into four parts and track what the customer does, thinks, says, and feels when using a product.

These can be helpful when defining who the persona is within your journey map.

Service blueprints

Service blueprints focus on how a brand delivers its products and services to customers rather than being customer-centric. In other words, they describe the behind-the-scenes details of the process.

They are mainly concerned with actions performed by every stakeholder in the purchase process. By focusing on service, gaps or friction points are identified and can be eliminated.

  • Map your brand's path to success

Journey mapping offers many benefits to a company. Once your customer journey map is in place, you will fully understand your customers’ experience.

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User Journey Map Guide with Examples & FREE Templates

18 April, 2024

Alice Ruddigkeit

Senior UX Researcher

User Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is also a popular workshop task to align user understanding within teams. If backed up by user data and research, they can be a high-level inventory that helps discover strategic oversights, knowledge gaps, and future opportunities.

Yet, if you ask two different people, you will likely get at least three different opinions as to what a user journey looks like and whether it is worth the hassle. Read on if you want to understand whether a UX journey map is what you currently need and how to create one.

You can get the templates here:

user journey map UX template

Click here to download a high-resolution PDF of this template.

What is user journey mapping?

Imagine your product is a supermarket and your user is the person wanting to refill their fridge. They need to: 

Decide what to buy, and in what supermarket will they be able to find and afford it

Remember to bring their coupons

Park there 

Find everything

Save the new coupons for the next shopping trip

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3 ways to understand user journey maps

Now, there are at least three ways to look at the customer journey.

1. Workflow maps for usability optimization 

Some imagine a user journey map as a wireframe or detailed analysis of  specific flows in their app . This could be, for example, a sign-up flow or the flow for inviting others to a document. In our supermarket example, it’s a closer look at what they do inside your supermarket, maybe even only in the frozen section. Or you could define what you want them to do in the frozen aisle.

.css-61w915{margin-right:8px;margin-top:8px;max-height:30px;}@media screen and (min-width: 768px){.css-61w915{margin-right:38px;max-height:unset;}} The focus here is on getting the details of the execution right, not how it fits into the bigger picture of what the user needs.

It is more or less a wireframe from a user perspective. Such a product-focused understanding is not what we want to discuss in this article, though many examples for the best user journey maps you might come across are exactly this. There are good reasons to do such an analysis as well, since it helps you smooth out usability for the people who have already found their way into your supermarket because of your excellent ice cream selection. Workflow maps won’t help you notice that your lack of parking spots is one of the reasons why you are missing out on potential customers in the first place. By only looking at what they do inside the supermarket, you might also miss out on an opportunity for user retention: You could help them get their ice cream home before it melts.

2. Holistic user journey maps for strategic insights

With a more holistic view of what people experience when trying to achieve a goal, product makers gain strategic insights on how their product fits into the big picture and what could be in the future. Because this journey document covers so much ground, it is usually a linear simplification of what all the steps would look like if they were completed. Going back to our supermarket example, it would start from the moment the person starts planning to fill the fridge and ends when the fridge is full again — even if the supermarket building is only relevant in a few phases of this journey. Creating this version of a user journey map requires quite some time and research effort. But it can be an invaluable tool for product and business strategy. It is an inventory of user needs that can help you discover knowledge gaps and future opportunities.  Service blueprints   are the most comprehensive version of a user journey map  since they also lay out the behind-the-scenes of a service, usually called backstage. In our supermarket example, that could be:

the advertising efforts

logistics required to keep all shelves stocked

protocols the staffers follow when communicating with customers

3. Journey mapping workshops as an alignment method

In a user journey mapping workshop, stakeholders and team members share their knowledge and assumptions about the users. Some of these assumptions might need to be challenged — which is part of the process. The goal is not the perfect output, but rather to get everyone into one room and work out a common understanding of the users they are building products for. It forces everyone to organize their thoughts, spell out what they know and assumed was common knowledge — and ideally meet real users as part of the workshop. If done right, this establishes a more comprehensive understanding of what users go through and helps overcome the very superficial ideas one might have about the lives and needs of people outside their own social bubble.

Hence, such a workshop helps create aha moments and gives the consequences of great and poor product decisions a face. So at the end of the day, it is one of many methods to evangelize user-centricity in an organization.

What are the benefits of user experience (UX) mapping?

We already discussed the benefits and shortcomings of workflow maps, but what are the reasons you should consider a UX journey map and/or a journey mapping workshop ?

1. Switching perspectives

Empathy:  Like any other UX method and user research output, user journey maps are supposed to foster empathy and help product makers put themselves into the shoes of a user. Awareness:  It creates awareness of why users do all the things they do. And it challenges product makers to resist the temptation of building something because it’s feasible, not because it’s needed that way.

2. Aligned understanding

Given the team is involved in creating the user experience map (either as a workshop, in expert interviews, observing the user research, or at least as a results presentation), it forces a conversation and offers a shared mental model and terminology — the foundation for a shared vision. 

3. Seeing the big picture

Imagine the vastly different perceptions Sales reps, Customer Support teams, C-level, and backend engineers might have since they all meet very different segments at very different stages of their journey. Day-to-day, it makes sense to be an expert in the stages of a user journey you are responsible for. A journey map helps to step back from this and see the bigger picture, where your work fits in, and where assumptions about the majority of users were wrong. It might even help define KPIs across teams that don’t cancel each other out.

4. Uncovering blind spots and opportunities

A user journey map gives you a structured and comprehensive overview of which user needs are already tackled by your product and which ones are either underserved or solved with other tools and touchpoints. Which moments of truth do not get enough attention yet? These are the opportunities and blind spots you can work on in the future.

When is customer journey mapping just a waste of time?

In all honesty, there are also moments when creating a user journey map or running a journey mapping workshop is destined to fail and should better be put on hold. It’s a lot of work, so don’t let this energy go to waste.  User journey maps only make sense when there is an intention to collaboratively work on and with them.  Here are some of the scenarios and indicators that it’s the wrong moment for a journey map:

No buy-in for the workshop: The requirements of a successful journey workshop are not met, e.g., there is not enough time (60 minutes over lunch won’t do the trick), only a few team members are willing to attend, and/or key stakeholders refuse to have their assumptions challenged.

Isolated creation: The whole creation process of the user journey map happens isolated from the team, e.g., it is outsourced to an agency or an intern. Nobody from the team observes or runs the user research, or is consulted for input or feedback on the first drafts. There is no event or presentation planned that walks the team through the output. Finally, a very detailed, 10-foot-long poster appears in a hallway, and none of the team members ever find time to read, process, or discuss it with each other.

UX theater: For one reason or another, there is no time/resources allocated to user research or reviewing existing insights whilst creating the map (usability tests with non-users do not count in this case, though). Such an approach, also known as, can do more harm than good since the resulting user journey may only reinforce wrong assumptions and wishful thinking about your users.

Unclear objectives: The user journey map is only created because it is on your UX design checklist, but the purpose is unclear. If you are unsure what you or your stakeholders want to achieve with this journey map, clarify expectations and desired output before investing more energy into this. E.g., there is a chance you were only meant to do a usability review of a bumpy app workflow.

Lack of follow-through: Creating a user journey map is just the start. Without a plan to implement changes based on insights gathered, the map is merely a paper exercise. This lack of action can result from limited resources, lack of authority, or inertia. It's vital to establish a process for turning insights from the map into design improvements or strategy adjustments. This includes assigning tasks, setting deadlines, and defining success metrics to ensure the map drives real change and doesn't end up forgotten.

Overcomplication: Sometimes, to capture every nuance and detail of the user experience, teams can create an overly complex user journey map. This can make the map difficult to understand and use, particularly for team members who weren't involved in its creation. A good user journey map should balance detail and clarity, providing insightful and actionable information without overwhelming its users.

Failure to update: User expectations, behaviors, and the digital landscape constantly evolve. A user journey map that remains static will quickly become outdated. Regular reviews and updates are necessary to ensure that the map reflects the current state of user experiences. This requires a commitment to ongoing user research and a willingness to adjust your understanding of the user's path as new information becomes available.

The good news is: UX maturity in an organization can change rapidly, so even if you run into one of the obstacles above, it is worth revisiting the idea in the future. Once you’re good to go, you can get started with the user journey map examples and templates below.

User journey mapping: examples, templates & tools

There is more than one way to do it right and design a great user journey map. Every organization and industry has its own templates, tools and approaches to what elements are most important to them. The following examples and template will give you an idea of what a user journey map can look like if you decide to create one yourself. Make it your own, and change up the sections and design so they make sense for your product and use cases.

User journey map template and checklist

To give you a first orientation, you can use this user journey template and check the two fictional examples below to see how you could adapt it for two very different industries: instant meal delivery and healthcare.

Click here to download a high-resolution PDF of the user journey map template. 

While there is no official standard, most other user journey maps contain the following elements or variations of them:

Key phases (or ‘stages’) start when users become aware of a problem they need to solve or a goal they want to achieve and may end when they evaluate whether they achieved their goal or enter a maintenance phase. E.g., user journeys for e-commerce could be structured along the classic funnel of:

Consideration

Delivery & use

Loyalty & advocacy

2. Jobs to be done

Whilst some other user journey templates might call this section ‘steps’ or ‘tasks’, it can be very beneficial to structure the stages into ‘jobs to be done’ (JTBD) instead. This framework helps you distinguish better between the actual goal of a user vs. the tasks required to get there . For example, safe online payments are never a goal of a user, this is just one of many jobs on the long way to get new sneakers on their feet. Ideally, users ‘hire’ your product/service to assist them with some of the JTBD on their journey. Phrase your JTBD as verb + object + context . Examples:

Install app on phone

Tip delivery driver

Buy new shoes

Naturally, the stages closest to your current (and future) solution require a more detailed understanding, so you might want to investigate and document deeper what JTBDs happen there.

3. Needs and pains

Users have needs and pains every step along the journey. Use this section to collect the most important needs and potential pains, even if not all apply in all cases. Ask:

What are the repeating themes, even the ones you are (currently) not able to solve with your product?

Phrase pains and needs as I- or me-statements from the user perspective, e.g., ‘I forgot my login details, ‘I am afraid to embarrass myself’ or ‘My day is too busy to wait for a delivery.’ 

Which are the pains and needs that are so severe that, if not solved, they can become real deal-breakers for your product or service?

On the last point, such deal-breaker and dealmaker situations, or ‘ moments of truth ’, require particular attention in your product decisions and could be visually highlighted in your journey. In a meal delivery, the taste and temperature of the food are such a moment of truth that can spoil the whole experience with your otherwise fantastic service.

4. Emotional curve

An emotional curve visualizes how happy or frustrated users are at certain stages of their journey. Emojis are commonly used to make it easy to understand and empathize with the emotional state of the user across the whole journey. It can be a surprising realization that users are not delighted with your witty microcopy, but you already did a great job by not annoying them. It is also a good reminder that what might personally excite you is perceived as stressful or overwhelming by most other users. Strong user quotes can be used for illustration.

5. Brand and product touchpoints

Here, you can list current and planned touchpoints with your brand and product, as well as. Whilst the touchpoints when using your product might be obvious, others early and late in the journey are probably less obvious to you but critical for the user experience and decision to use or return to your product. This is why it is worthwhile to include them in your map. Make sure your journey does not get outdated too soon, and don’t list one-off marketing campaigns or very detailed aspects of current workflows — just what you got in general so there is no major revision needed for a couple of years.

6. Opportunities for improvement

As you map out your user journey, it is important to not only identify the current touchpoints and experiences but also opportunities for improvement. This could include potential areas where users may become frustrated or confused, as well as areas where they may be delighted or pleasantly surprised.

By identifying these opportunities, you can prioritize making meaningful improvements to the user experience and ultimately creating a more positive, long-lasting relationship with your users.

7. Other tools and touchpoints

This may seem the least interesting aspect of your journey or a user interview, but it can tell you a lot about blind spots in your service or potential partnerships or APIs to extend your service. E.g., Google Maps or WhatsApp are common workaround tools for missing or poor in-app solutions.

User journey map example 1: health industry

The following example is for a fictional platform listing therapists for people in need of mental health support, helping them find, contact, schedule, and pay for therapy sessions. As you can see, the very long journey with recurring steps (repeated therapy sessions) is cut short to avoid repetition. 

At the same time, it generalizes very individual mental health experiences into a tangible summary. While it is fair to assume that the key phases happen in this chronological order, JTBD, timing, and the number of sessions are kept open so that it works for different types of patients.

You can also see how the journey covers several phases when the platform is not in active use. Yet, these phases are milestones in the patient’s road to recovery. Looking at a journey like this, you could, for example, realize that a ‘graduation’ feature could be beneficial for your users, even if it means they will stop using your platform because they are feeling better.

This user journey map is fictional but oriented on Johanne Miller’s UX case study  Designing a mental healthcare platform . 

User journey map example 2: delivery services

What the example above does not cover is the role of the therapist on the platform — most likely they are a second user type that has very different needs for the way they use the platform. This is why the second example shows the two parallel journeys of two different user roles and how they interact with each other. 

Nowadays, internal staff such as delivery drivers have dedicated apps and ideally have a designated UX team looking out for their needs, too. Creating a frictionless and respectful user experience for ‘internal users’ is just as critical for the success of a business as it is to please customers.

customer journey map examples

User journey map example: meal delivery. Please note that this fictional journey map is just an example for illustrative purposes and has not been backed up with user research.

For more inspiration, you can find collections with more real-life user journey examples and customer journey maps on  UXeria ,  eleken.co  &  userinterviews.com , or check out free templates provided by the design tools listed below.

Free UX journey mapping tools with templates

No matter whether you’re a design buff or feel more comfortable in spreadsheets, there are many templates available for free(mium) tools you might be already using. 

For example, there are good templates and tutorials available for  Canva ,  Miro  and even  Google Sheets . If you are more comfortable with regular design software, you can use the templates available for  Sketch  or one of these two from the  Figma (template 1 ,  template 2 ) community. There are also several dedicated journey map tools with free licenses or free trials, e.g.,  FlowMapp ,  Lucidchart  and  UXPressia , just to name a few.

Be aware that the first draft will require a lot of rearrangement and fiddling until you get to the final version. So it might help to pick where this feels easy for you. 

How do I collect data for my app user journey?

User journey maps need to be rooted in reality and based on what users really need and do (not what we wish they did) to add value to the product and business strategy. Hence, user insights are an inevitable step in the creation process.

However, it’s a huge pile of information that needs to be puzzled together and usually, one source of information is not enough to cover the whole experience — every research method has its own blind spots. But if you combine at least two or three of the approaches below, you can create a solid app user journey .

1. In-house expertise

The people working for and with your users are an incredible source of knowledge to start and finalize the journey. Whilst there might be a few overly optimistic or biased assumptions you need to set straight with your additional research, a user journey mapping workshop and/or  expert interviews  involving colleagues from very different (user-facing) teams such as:

customer service

business intelligence

customer insights

will help you collect a lot of insights and feedback. You can use these methods to build a preliminary skeleton for your journey but also to finalize the journey with their input and feedback.

2. Desk research

Next to this, it is fair to assume there is already a ton of preexisting documented knowledge about the users simply floating around in your company. Your  UX research repository  and even  industry reports  you can buy or find with a bit of googling will help. Go through them and pick the cherries that are relevant for your user journey. Almost anything can be interesting:

Old research reports and not-yet-analyzed context interviews from earlier user interviews

NPS scores & user satisfaction surveys

App store feedback

Customer support tickets

Product reviews written by journalists

Competitor user journeys in publicly available UX case studies

Ask your in-house experts if they know of additional resources you could check. And find out if there’s already a  long-forgotten old journey map  from a few years ago that you can use as a starting point (most organizations have those somewhere).

3. Qualitative user research

Qualitative research methods are your best shot to learn about all the things users experience, think, and desire before and after they touch your product.  In-depth interviews  and  focus groups  explore who they are and what drives them. You could show them a skeleton user journey for feedback or  co-creation . 

This could also be embedded into your user journey mapping workshop with the team. Alternatively, you can follow their actual journey in  diary studies ,  in-home visits  or  shadowing . However, in all these cases it is important that you talk to real users of your product or competitors to learn more about the real scenarios. This is why usability testing with non-users or fictional scenarios won’t help much for the user journey map.

4. Quantitative research

Once you know the rough cornerstones of your user journey map,  surveys  could be used to let users rate what needs and pains really matter to them. And what their mood is at certain phases of the journey. You can learn how they became aware of your product and ask them which of the motives you identified are common or exotic edge cases. Implementing micro-surveys such as  NPS surveys , CES , and  CSAT  embedded into your product experience can give additional insights.

5. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey

Customer satisfaction surveys (or CSATs for short) are important tools that measure your customers' satisfaction with your product or service. It is usually measured through surveys or feedback forms, asking customers to rate their experience on a scale from 1 to 5. This metric can give valuable insights into the overall satisfaction of your customers and can help identify areas of improvement for your product.

CSAT surveys can be conducted at different customer journey stages, such as after purchase or using a specific feature. This allows you to gather feedback on different aspects of your product and make necessary changes to improve overall satisfaction.

The benefit of CSAT lies in understanding how satisfied customers are with your product and why. By including open-ended questions in the surveys, you can gather qualitative insights into what aspects of your product work well and what needs improvement.

5. User analytics

User analytics is a beautiful source of information, even if it has its limits. Depending on what tools you are using (e.g., Google Analytics, Firebase, Hubspot, UXCam), you can follow the digital footprints of your users before and when they were using the product. This may include  acquisition channels  (input for brand touchpoints and early journey phases),  search terms  that brought them to your product (input for needs and pains), and how they navigate your product. 

Unlike a usability test, you can use  screen flows  and  heatmaps  to understand how your users behave naturally when they follow their own agenda at their own pace — and how often they are so frustrated that they just quit. Knowing this gives you pointers to negative user emotions at certain journey steps and even helps identify your product’s moments of truth. Whilst you cannot ask the users if your interpretations are correct, checking analytics already helps you prepare good questions and talking points for user interviews or surveys.

Curious to know how heatmaps will look in your app?  Try UXCam for free — with 100,000 monthly sessions and unlimited features.

How can I utilize UXCam to collect App User Journey data?

If you have UXCam set up in your mobile app, you can use it to support your user journey research. You can find many of the previously mentioned  user analytics  features ( screen flows  and  heatmaps , including  rage taps ) here as well. 

UXCam can also be an  invaluable asset for your qualitative research . Especially for niche products and B2B apps that normally have a lot of trouble  recruiting real users  via the usual user testing platforms. 

UXCam’s detailed segmentation options allow you to  identify exactly the users you want to interview  about their journey — and  reach out to them via either email or UXCam push notifications , which can include invitation links for your study, a survey or an additional screener.

Additionally, UXCam's session replay feature allows you to watch recordings of user sessions, providing valuable insights into how users interact with your app and where they may face challenges.

Where can I learn more about user journey map?

Don’t feel ready to get started? Here are a few additional resources that can help you dive deeper into user journey mapping and create the version that is best for your project.

Creating user journey maps & service blueprints:

Mapping Experiences by Jim Kalbach

Journey Mapping 101

How to create customer journey maps

Customer Journey Stages for Product Managers

The Perfect Customer Journey Map

Planning and running user journey mapping workshops:

Journey mapping workshop

Jobs to be done:

The Theory of Jobs To Be Done

Moments of truth in customer journeys:

Journey mapping MoTs

What is a user journey map?

A user journey map is a visual representation of the process that a user goes through to accomplish a goal with your product, service, or app.

What is a user journey?

A user journey refers to the series of steps a user takes to accomplish a specific goal within a product, service, or website. It represents the user's experience from their point of view as they interact with the product or service, starting from the initial contact or discovery, moving through various touchpoints, and leading to a final outcome or goal.

How do I use a user journey map in UX?

User journey maps are an essential tool in the UX design process, used to understand and address the user's needs and pain points.

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COMMENTS

  1. Journey Mapping 101 - Nielsen Norman Group

    Journey maps are a common UX tool. They come in all shapes, sizes, and formats. Depending on the context, they can be used in a variety of ways. This article covers the basics: what a journey map is (and is not), related terminology, common variations, and how we can use journey maps.

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    Introduction to UX Journey Mapping Definition and Purpose. UX journey mapping is a strategic exercise aimed at creating a holistic view of the customer experience by outlining every touchpoint and interaction a customer has with a brand.

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    A UX journey map focuses on the user experience of a specific product, typically an app or website. With these types of maps, you can gain insight into how a customer interacts with your software and what they might find helpful or frustrating.

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    A user journey map is an excellent tool for UX designers because it visualizes how a user interacts with a product and allows designers to see a product from a user’s point of view. This fosters a more user-centric approach to product design, which ultimately leads to a better user experience.

  5. How to create an effective user journey map - Figma

    What is a user journey map, and how it captures user flows and customer touchpoints. Benefits of user journey mapping to refine UX design and reach business goals. How to make user journey maps in five steps, using FigJam’s user journey map template.

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    A user journey map is a visual representation of what a user must do to achieve a goal, and outlines the experience they have with your brand. Their goal might be to complete a purchase, find information, or sign up to a service.

  7. How to design a customer journey map (A step-by-step guide)

    A customer journey map is a visual representation of how a user interacts with your product. Learn how to create a customer journey map in this practical step-by-step guide. Successful UX design is rooted in empathy.

  8. How to Do UX Journey Mapping: A Detailed Guide | Looppanel

    Discover what UX journey maps are, how they differ from customer journey maps, and the key steps to create one. Explore valuable user journey map tools and get a free template to kickstart your journey mapping journey.

  9. Journey Mapping in UX Design: Ultimate 2024 Guide - Dovetail

    Journey mapping makes products functional, intuitive, and easy to use. If you’re looking to create user-friendly, intuitive experiences for your customers, journey mapping is a key part of UX design. Find out everything you need to know about journey mapping in this guide.

  10. User Journey Map: The Ultimate Guide & FREE Templates - Bluespace

    The user journey map, also known as customer journey map or user experience journey map is a way to visually structure your knowledge of potential users and how they experience a service. Customer journey mapping is also a popular workshop task to align user understanding within teams.