- visualize the experience of a person over time
- help to find gaps in CX & explore potential solutions
- between each of those steps customers experience friction & it's our job to help them bridge the gap - typical frictions: "why should I buy / use / stick with it?" & the product should give easy answers to those so that the user is on a smooth ride (Fadell)
- structured as a series of steps: events, moments, experiences, interactions
- usually have various scales to represent different aspects of one experience (different zoom levels)
- help make "intangible" experiences visible and facilitate common understanding
- can be assumption or research based
- "the role of a designer is to visualize exactly how a customer discovers, considers, installs, uses, fixes and even returns your product" (Fadell)
How far the journey runs
The map usually stops at the product; the journey doesn't. A fuller span, where step 4 is where most UX/product designers put most of their effort (Fadell):
- awareness
- education
- acquisition
- product
- onboarding
- usage
- support
- loyalty
Types
- Current state — find problems or improvements in current service
- Future state — help to imagine a yet-to-be-made service
Focus
- Product-centered — map containing only touchpoints (interactions between customer & product); everything outside the company is hidden; e.g. useful for onboarding mapping; may miss important contextual info
- XP-centered — reflects situational context and shows how touchpoints are embedded in overall experience; often the design challenge shifts from "what is the onboarding XP?" to "what is the XP of moving houses, and where does the electricity provider swap fit in?"
What to include
- Main actor — usually a persona or multiple
- Stages — main phases of the actor's experience
- Steps — sequence of steps from the actor's perspective
- Storyboards — illustrations with sketches, photos
- Emotional journey — graphs representing satisfaction at each step (often [-2, +2])
- Channels — means of communication involved in each step
- Stakeholders — who should be involved in research, prototyping & implementation
- Dramatic arc — actor's engagement at each step
- 'What if?' — what could go wrong at each step
- Jobs to be done — what the service helps the actor achieve at each step
- Objectives, actions, required resources, artifacts, touchpoints, opportunities, pain points, anxieties
Concepts
- Channel — the method by which a business communicates to customers (app, website, print, etc.)
- Touchpoint — any point where a customer observes or interacts with the brand
See also: Service blueprint, Persona, System maps