The purpose of a journey map and how it can galvanize action?
Recognizing types, roles and pitfalls — an effective way to make journey maps
1. Customer Experiences- Today’s better is tomorrow’s average.
Today people (users) are living among a sea of products, services and information systems. Brands are inclined towards delivering experiences to consumers rather than just a product that solves a problem. It is not a luxury but a necessity for brands because they need to differentiate themselves from competitors. In this era of overabundance, when multiple businesses are wrestling for the same customer and their attention, it is imperative for businesses to create an ecosystem of its offering that not only entices the user but also engages and retains them.
This has resulted in a complex system of offerings where businesses are operating at different levels, using multiple touchpoints to give a better and consistent experience to the customers. Which has further resulted into a reinforcing loop where not only the benchmark of good experiences for users is always increasing and they expect consistency but also the complexity associated with it, has made it difficult for businesses to gauge the exact experiences that users are having in these ecosystems of interactions.
Get the experience model right and consistent - the customers are forever loyal and get it wrong or be inconsistent - you lose the customer forever.
This is the paradigm in which businesses are functioning today. Businesses need to consider every touchpoint and every dynamic that is playing in the foreground and the background to cater that unique experience to the user. Which is a very complex task to understand, manage and deliver.
As complexities increase, so increases the thinker’s quest to identify new tools and methods to solve these complex challenges.
This is what happened when intellectuals invented tools to map the complex user/customer experiences in the form of an artifact which we today know as Customer Journey Maps. The forefathers of customer journey maps can be traced back to the ’90s and early 2000s. Authors Lewis Carbone and Stephan Haeckel speak of an experience blueprint, in a seminal article appearing in Marketing Management in 1994 and customer experience expert Colin Shaw introduced the concept of what he called “moment mapping” in 2002.
2. What is the role of a journey map as an empathy-building and storytelling device?
Today Journey maps are used in numerous formats that best fits the purpose of the entities using it but at its core lies the intention to understand the customers, their experiences and the touchpoints over a timeline. This timeline that we speak of can vary from a few hours, minutes and seconds to entire years or even decades. This measure in terms of time is extremely important to consider because these journeys are made of moments and experiences by nature are varying from moment to moment, which the authors of Journey maps have termed as highs / peaks (delightful moments) and lows / troughs (disappointing moments).
It is this quality of effectively capturing human experiences and emotions at specific moments in time during interactions with different touchpoints and ability to uncover underlying user stories in sequential steps which makes good Journey Maps a compelling empathy building and storytelling artifact and differentiates it from the bad ones.
3. Types of journey maps
Depending on the requirement, journey maps can be used to map the existing experiences or the desired future experience. The current-state journey maps depict the existing experiences of the users with products and services. Whereas a future-state journey map can be used to plan and envision a best case, ideal-state journey for a product that may or may not exist yet.
Apart from these, the journey maps can also be differentiated based on approaches which the Nielson Norman Group calls as assumptions first approach or research first approach.
Assumption-based journey maps can bring agility in the process and inform stakeholders about the nature and outcomes of this artifact. It may also help in structuring the pieces of the experience that you want to discover and build by using the existing organizational knowledge but I would highly recommend using it before mapping the actual experience and not rely on it entirely.
As the assumption based maps may be highly biased at times, these should always be followed by research based journey map which may be a current-state or a future -state journey map.
Now one shouldn’t confuse between the hypothesis-based journey maps, assumption-based journey maps, current-state journey maps and future-state journey maps. These have distinct differences, the most important one being the origin of data and the purpose of creation. Hypothesis map is a type of assumption map (I would not even hesitate to call it same as assumption based map with just a different name) based on internal stakeholders inputs and are mostly created to guide the actual customer research before the current-state journey maps are created. To create distinction, I call these inside-out ( originating from stakeholders to improve the user/customer experience) . These are mostly chunks of clustered (data) information that is trying to tell a story about the user from the perspective of organization's internal stakeholders. On the other hand we have a current-state journey map which may have its origin in the user/customer research and is mapped across a timeline to capture the experience over a period of time. I call this outside-in (from users/customers to improve the user/customer experience).
To simplify this complexity I write journey maps in the following ways:
- Current state Journey Maps (can be research based or assumption/hypothesis based or hybrid approach based where both customer research and assumption/hypothesis are used)
- Future-State Journey Maps (can be hybrid approach based on both customer research and assumption/hypothesis or purely assumption/hypothesis based)
Note: A Future-State Journey map may be based on customer research but it still has a lot of informed assumptions because it is being envisioned to create a best case experience for the users that doesn’t exist yet. So it would be better to call it a journey map originating from a hybrid approach.
Another type of mapping that we come across is process maps. These are entirely different from journey maps. Process maps are often flow charts that visually describe the flow of work at a required level of detail meaning one can go micro or macro while capturing the who and what is involved in the process. These maps show a series of events that lead to an end result. These are good at capturing the flaws in the system and identifying opportunities of improvement.
4. Weaknesses and pitfalls of journey maps
In the previous section I talked briefly about, how teams can fall prey to bad practices if the journey maps they create are only hypothesis/assumption based and not followed up with customer research based journey maps. Let’s discuss a few more pitfalls.
Journey maps are really effective in capturing levels of complexity and information related to aspects that build the experience for users. These maps can capture a variety of information and there are several ways to build these maps. Because journey maps are built of information layers/segments, it can be used to add all such layers one top of the other. For example one can start with segmenting phases of the journey and keep adding layers such as goals, frustrations, emotions, opportunities etc. within those phases. Depending on the requirement one can further add layers such as touchpoints/channels etc. You see! This flexibility is never ending and left best to the judgement of the creator.
Now some authors claim that journey maps are static because it is dependent on heavily synthesized raw data which makes it difficult to add new insight without changing their structure. I do not completely disagree or agree with this view point but I wouldn’t call a journey map — static artifact because you can still add layers and segments of information based on new findings but of course there is additional time and effort associated with it.
Because journey maps are flexible, It can be very tempting to include all the information that you have at your hand. Which may backfire by resulting in the artifact becoming more complex and overwhelming for the stakeholders to understand. Not all information is useful or worthy enough to be put on the journey maps. So clarity on which data to consider and keep and which ones to ignore and exclude becomes an important aspect which should be driven by deep stakeholder/team discussions and debate.
Another complexity that one may add is by trying to depict the experiences of multiple users on a single journey map.
Adding multiple users in one journey map may not be wrong but in my opinion it surely adds to the complexity of the map. Therefore one journey map should be focused on one primary user and all other users/agents should be added only in context of how they are impacting the experience of the primary user.
Let’s understand this better:
Suppose you are mapping the journey of a child buying a toy from a toy shop along with his mother and you want to map the purchase experience. Now both the child and mother are important considerations because they are both going to make important decisions during the purchase that will impact the whole experience. Now who would you make the journey map for? The child, the mother, both. There is no objective answer to this. But it may be helpful to consider one of them as the primary user depending on project requirements and business goals.
Let’s consider the child as the primary user, whose experience you are going to impact. Then you can talk about the mother in context of how her interaction with the other agents and artifacts of the system impacts her child’s experience of buying a toy.
To illustrate with an example, let’s say you are capturing the frustrations of the child in the journey map. In this case one of the frustrations of the child can be that she is not able to purchase the toy. Why? Because her mother is not agreeing to buy her favorite toy. Now why her mother is not buying a toy can have various reasons. Maybe it is costly, maybe it is bad quality, maybe it’s not ergonomic for children, maybe the mother had a bad experience with the sales person or other products of the toy brand in the past, who knows. But all these reasons can be the ingredients of another journey map. This not only reduces complexity but also encourages user focus of the journey map. Later teams can come up with ways to connect these individual journeys of mother and child to understand their overall experiences.
Now it doesn’t mean that the journey maps can’t include two users. It surely can, if teams find a way to represent the experience in a simpler and comprehensible way.
Remember the intent of the journey map is to illustrate the experience of/for the users and break the layers of complexity, not add layers of complexity to it.
Below is an example of a journey map that was created by me for one of the projects. I find a lot of scope to improve on this journey map from my perspective. Can you call out what’s working and what’s not from your perspective in the comment section?
Click the link below to see an enlarged image of the journey map
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XnaWP9gABNqR9I6hwoGnelBJyCRLCRzD/view?usp=sharing
Note: This is not a correct journey map to follow. It is one of the iterations attached here to nudge thoughts and conversations.
5. Who is a journey map for and what role, if any, can journey maps play in influencing (design and non-design) decision-making?
Journey maps are an important tool also because it’s an artifact or a common point of reference that all the stakeholders within organizations can refer to and agree/disagree to. It intends to project the same story to every stakeholder involved irrespective of their knowledge base or background. Without such artifacts it can be difficult for team members to understand one another although they might be talking about the same thing. To quote “Matt Cooper-Wright (Design Director @IDEO) from one of his articles-
And this is where artifacts such as Journey maps come in to build that common language and interpretation. It influences decision-making within organizations because if done correctly it brings clarity and tangibility which can galvanize actions.
I got a lot of clarity in the process of writing this article but I am still trying to understand and comprehend the best practice of creating journey maps. I don’t know if there is one. But clearly Journey Maps are like chameleons that can change its shape size and form based on requirements from projects to projects. Please write the challenges that you have faced in your practice while making journey maps.
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