To understand the purpose of User Journey Mapping better, I took part in a group exercise where we were tasked with User Journey Mapping the experience of a student looking for a postgraduate course.
To start, we defined each of the steps in the process along the top row. We found the best way to do this was to select a few core steps, and then add in additional steps between them, to ensure a comprehensive process for the user.
Next, we went into more detail about the actions required for each step. This was a fairly easy part and just helped to flesh out the experience.
After this, we explored the emotions the user may feel at each step. This was trickier to define as there were occasionally conflicting emotions on each step, but it was really insightful as there were a lot of emotions that came out when we really considered how they would feel, rather than just going off initial instincts. We then converted the emotions to a chart to identify the peaks and troughs which would help focus on the key parts of the journey.
The final step was to identify opportunities to improve the user experience. This was the trickiest part of the process as it was either having to come up with bespoke solutions to a specific step, or smaller fixes to improve the overall journey.
Had we done this again, I would have liked to identify the user’s pains and needs between the actions and emotions, as I feel this would have allowed the to user better identify the emotions and what was causing them.
This has been really useful at allowing me to understand the purpose of User Journey Mapping, as technique I previous hadn’t really understood. I think it’s the context of this modules project that has helped me understand it’s importance in the design process as it’s essentially the link between the user personas and the project solution. Knowing this now I’ll be able to effectively use them in my project which I think will help me a lot.