Creating User Journey Maps: A Guide

One of the most significant skills you’ll leverage as a UI/UX designer is your ability to empathize with the people using the products you design. Creating user journey maps can help you harness that empathy and transform it into valuable insights about your customers and product. Learn more about what a user journey map is and why it’s an important tool in the UX designer’s toolbox.

What is the user journey map?

A user journey map visualizes a customer’s experience. This visualization might cover a customer’s entire relationship with a brand or focus on a select experience they might have while interacting with an app or website. No matter the type, user journey maps serve as a useful tool for understanding user needs and pain points and ultimately optimizing user experience (UX). 

Get started in UX: Microsoft UX Design Professional Certificate

What is a user journey?

A user journey refers to the specific path a user takes to accomplish a goal with an app, website, or other development project. A user journey can be very specific to the user, such as the journey of purchasing a gift for your mother by visiting a website, navigating through the products, and coming to a decision based on factors unique to you about which item to purchase. 

Why create user journey maps?

The main job of a UX designer is to make products intuitive, functional, and enjoyable to use. By creating a user journey map, you’re thinking about a product from a potential customer’s point of view. This can help in several ways.

• User journey maps foster a user-centric mentality. You’ll focus on how a user might think and feel while using your product, as well as what goals they’re trying to achieve and what obstacles they might face along the way.

• User journey maps create a shared vision for your company. This visualization can serve as a point of reference for different team members and stakeholders throughout the product development process. 

• User journey maps can uncover blind spots. Taking the time to map out how a user interacts with your product (and how they feel doing so) may reveal design flaws or new opportunities you hadn’t considered. 

Still not convinced? Listen to Michael, an interaction designer at Google, explain the importance of user-centric design.

Types of journey maps

Journey maps can be as unique and creative as your design products. While you can use any template for a user journey, you will find a few main types of these maps. 

• A UX journey map focuses on the user experience of a specific product, typically an app or website. With these types of maps, you can gain insight into how a customer interacts with your software and what they might find helpful or frustrating. This, in turn, helps you design simpler and easier-to-use software.

• A sales journey map follows the buyer’s journey through its typical stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. To maximize sales, marketing teams can use these maps to evaluate how customers interact with a brand across multiple communication channels.

• A customer experience journey map offers a high-level view of a customer-brand relationship across time. A current-state customer journey map focuses on current customer interactions (and how they can be improved). Future-state customer journey maps can drive innovation by imagining new customer experiences. 

Elements of a user journey map

As you begin to map out user journeys, you’ll likely find ways to customize your maps to your particular company, product, and customer base. Search for user maps on the web, and you’ll find a range of creative examples. But take a closer look; you’ll find that many of these maps have a few elements in common.

Persona: What segment of users are you trying to understand (current or target)?

Scenario: What interaction are you trying to map out (real or anticipated)? 

Stages of the journey: What are the high-level phases of the scenario? 

User actions: What actions can the user take in each stage of the journey?

User emotions and thoughts: What is the user’s emotional state as they move through the stages? What are they thinking in each stage?

Opportunities: Where can you improve the UX of your product or connect more effectively with your customers?

Internal ownership: Which team or team member will be responsible for enacting these changes?

Read more: 9 Essential Skills for UX Designers

How to create a user journey map

Now that you’ve reviewed what a user journey map is, why you might want to create one, and what elements you should include, explore the basic steps to create your own user journey map.

1. Define the scope.

Creating a helpful user journey map starts with defining your goals. Are you mapping the journey of a new target user across the entire buyer’s journey? Or are you seeking to make a transaction on an app—transferring money, for example—more intuitive? Being clear on your goals now can help give you more relevant insights once your map is complete and help prevent scope creep, which is when your project gets off track.  

2. Build user personas.

Typically, you’ll want a different map for each unique user type. Not all your customers will have the same needs (or the same ways of going about meeting those needs). Consider your users, and create a customer persona for each segment. This often starts with user research. Customer interviews, focus group discussions, surveys, and even prior customer feedback can help you develop these personas and better understand the customer perspective. User personas are sometimes referred to as buyer personas.

3. Define user goals, expectations, and pain points.

Once you have a better idea of your target user, spend some time thinking about what they want. What problem do prospective customers have that your product or service can solve? What expectations might they have as they begin their journey? What problems might they face, or what about your product might cause them frustration? How can your product or service meet customer expectations?

4. List out touchpoints and channels.

The term “customer touchpoint” refers to a point of interaction between a user and a product or business. Typical customer touchpoints occur across many different business channels, including websites, social media platforms, apps, ads, or face-to-face communications. Create an inventory of all the customer touchpoints and channels involved in the scenario you’ve previously defined.

5. Map the journey stages.

You’ve gathered the data you need to populate your map, so now it’s time to visualize this information with a customer journey map template. This is where you can get creative. Your map could be as simple as a timeline or as complex as a storyboard that visually shows what happens in each journey phase. You could take a low-tech approach with sticky notes on a whiteboard or go digital with Google Sheets or customer journey mapping tools.

Many UX tools offer journey mapping capabilities, including Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD. You’ll also find a range of dedicated journey mapping tools, such as UXPressia, Smaply, Custellence, or Visual Paradigm. UX research and consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group offers a free template that could also help you get started. 

6. Validate and refine the map.

User journey mapping is only as strong as it is truthful. Validate the map by moving through the user journey yourself. Usability testing, analytics, and reviews from real customers can also help validate that your map reflects the average customer's reality. Continue to refine the map as you discover discrepancies.

Other types of UX mapping

The user journey map is one of many mapping tools UX designers might use throughout the design process. Explore some of the other types that can be used independently or alongside your journey map.

Service blueprint

A journey map illustrates the customer experience. A service blueprint maps out what goes on behind the scenes to deliver that experience. The former is customer-focused, the latter organization-focused.

User flow

A user flow maps out the path a generic user takes through a website or app to a successful outcome. These often take the form of a flow chart and are not focused on specific personas. 

Empathy map

This tool helps you better understand customer actions by mapping out what these users say, think, feel, and do. You may find it helpful to create an empathy map as part of Steps Two and Three above. 

Experience map

This visualization tracks the entire experience of a generic user as they seek to achieve a goal or satisfy a need. These maps typically look at a larger context to evaluate how potential customers solve their problems with or without your product.

Create your user journey map.

User journey mapping is an essential part of the UX design process. Enhance your skills with these popular courses on Coursera:

Create a user journey map with a two-hour guided project. Get Started with User Experience Design in Miro is a hands-on course where you'll build a UX design project while exploring and learning about what you can do in Miro.

Learn where and how user journey mapping is used in the design process with Google's course Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate. You'll craft user stories, develop user journey maps, and more in 21 hours or less.

Build your UX design knowledge with Google's UX Design Professional Certificate. The popular series includes the abovementioned class and aims to develop the skills you'll need for an entry-level UX design role. Learn how to empathize with users and design a delightful experience. Once completed, you'll earn a shareable certificate and gain access to exclusive career resources such as resume review and interview prep.