Basic Journey Mapping

The classic step by step map

I mentioned journey maps several times, so let’s investigate this method further.

Basically, a journey map shows step-by-step what actions a person is taking to achieve a goal. It can be product-specific, how they interact with a product/service, or, more general, how they act and behave in a given context.

The steps are shown visually separated, usually from left to right.

For example, to produce a post like this, the rough journey map for me looks like this:

One step at a time. As you see, I didn’t add any details about when this is happening, where this is happening, and how exactly this is happening. Also, you can imagine sometimes it is not as linear as this flow shows. But it gives you an idea about what the workflow looks like.

A Journey Map shows actions, in chronological order, a person takes to accomplish a specific goal.

Time in these maps is usually not evenly distributed. For the example above, writing down an idea usually takes less time than writing a post.

The map shows steps like a person would describe how they do something. Each step can be connected by “… and then …“

Writing these steps down and ordering them helps you clarify what people are doing and gives a starting point to dig deeper into each step.

Journey Maps are the core of a lot of other mapping methods. User/Customer Journeys, Service Blueprints, User Story Maps, etc., all build on this simple principle.

And even without knowing about these methods, I’m sure you can already imagine many useful augmentations to such a map.

Try it for your product. Just write down what steps a user is taking and ask if your team agrees.