As we learn more about our users through user interviews, questionnaires, and other listening methods, it can be very helpful to capture the general experience and stages that users go through. Customer journey mapping is a great tool that you can use:

Customer journey mapping can help you get the big picture whenever someone asks questions such as:

Additionally, involving the team in developing the journey is a great way to bring your research to life through cross-functional collaboration. Especially if the team is involved in the research (even if they aren't!) ), this is a great way to help people get more involved in what they're learning, and can be applied to building a profile that can be used as a reference by the team so you can continue to expand the journey of how you and your product can impact users.

In one case study, I was fortunate to have stakeholders who were invested in learning about our users and were willing to experiment with ways to help us synthesize the lessons learned from previous user interviews. After completing the interviews, we scheduled some time to work as a team to map the users' personal experiences and journeys.

*Note: While we can have these discussions face-to-face, they can also be done remotely! Don't let face-to-face usability stop the team from coming together to do this.

Some of the takeaways I've learned by bringing teams together to build customer journey maps:

*Note: If team members are remote, I recommend using a tool such as Mural, which digitally allows teams to collaborate in the same way.

If you google examples of customer travel maps, you'll find many different forms! While there are many ways to do this, there are definitely some aspects that you would recommend to ensure that you have to accurately capture the user's experience and any associated emotions they go through (again, we're putting ourselves in their shoes, telling their story, and building empathy for their experience!) .

Quick Disclaimer : The following advice is the lessons we used in this workshop, which I picked up by attending the Nielsen Norman Group's Journey Mapping course at a UX conference. It's a great course if you're looking for a deeper practice in mapping journeys!

So you've just developed a customer journey map with your team - what next? Ultimately, this map helps to tell the user's story and also visualizes the perceptions that your team is ****ing with, so figure out how to better focus and communicate what you've created.

Through our own workshop, we learned some important lessons:

Customer journey maps are a great tool for sharing the full picture of a person's experience, interactions, and emotions. Whenever you find yourself or your team struggling to articulate a user's journey, consider getting the team together*** to create a customer journey map together. This will help you centralize and integrate your knowledge, create empathy and understanding for your users, and bring the team together around the people who are at the center of your experience.

Have any suggestions, feedback or questions? Or want to chat about UX, you can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

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