🔵 Empathize phase & ✅ Define phase
A journey map is a tool to dissect a process into its moving parts to illuminate areas of potential insights. Don’t forget the details when gaining empathy and understanding for a user and their experience. Creating a journey map is an excellent way to systematically think about those detailed steps or milestones. Journey maps can be used for your own empathy work, or to communicate your findings to others.
How to use a journey map
Choose a process to examine
For example, your user’s morning breakfast routine. Then create a map of that process that captures every step. Organize the data in a way that makes sense: a timeline of events, a series of pictures, a stack of cards. You can create a journey map based on observation and interview, or a user can draw their own.
Be comprehensive
Don’t overlook the opening of window shades during the morning breakfast routine. What seems meaningless could be the nugget that develops into a stunning insight.
Look for patterns and anomalies
Push yourself to connect individual events to a larger framework. It’s often the pairing of an observation with prior knowledge that yields a meaningful insight.
Credit
design thinking bootleg by d.school at Stanford University