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Journey Mapping define

Define the happy path for your personas.

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Tools

  • Personas
  • Video conferencing app
  • Screensharing app
  • Mapping app

Why do it:

We use journey mapping as an exercise for determining a list of requirements for our project as well as uncovering hidden issues. It also encourages the team to empathize with users.

When to do it:

Journey maps are created after you’ve made personas for your project.

Who’s involved:

Designers and stakeholders. These should be done collaboratively. The bonus of collaborating is that valuable conversations arise through the process of co-authoring the journey maps. They can also be done solo as an exercise to work through design issues.

Time estimate:

Small (1 -2 hours per persona)

One way to do it:

  1. Review the persona’s goals, values, and what makes them stressed. (If you haven’t made a persona, and are short on time, try to identify a typical user for your project.)

  2. Have one participant take on the role of the persona. All of the other participants should take notes in a mapping application such as BoardThing or Trello.

  3. The person playing the role of persona should start out by identifying what their goal is. (Example: my goal is to book a hotel for my vacation with my partner). Next, have them identify the very first step that they might take in order to achieve that goal. Note that this most likely will start before the persona even gets on to the website or application.

  4. Describe each step in detail. From here on out have the persona role player walk through every possible step that they would take until just after they reach their goal. The steps taken after the goal has been achieved are crucial to note as it informs you where they are heading next. If you have an application, don’t start at logging in, instead start at the motive that would make someone need to log in.

  5. Once you have completed documenting the entire scenario, have the non-persona role playing participants provide feedback on the journey. Now is a good time to ask clarifying questions ranging from the order of steps that a persona might take to more nuanced inquiries.

Examples:

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