We have reached the end of this stage in our journey together.  But before we part, the culmination of what has been learned these past seven weeks needs to be discussed.  From looking at the design process as a whole to breaking down each individual step, there has been a lot of work in determining what exactly Principles of User Experience Design means.  Another component of this is a journey map.

Journey maps are tools for picturing the hypothetical path (or journey) a customer will embark on when deciding to finally use a specific product or service.  Journey maps are/can be tailored to individual personas, as discussed in “Multiple Personalities”.  Even though two people might be using the same product or service, their individual feelings and interactions with it will lead to entirely different outcomes for each of them.  For this reason, the more variation in personas and their corresponding journey maps a company has, the better suited they will be to tailor to their many clients.

Journey maps have a lot of components to helpfully capture all of the components of one’s own experience.  In my opinion, the ones that are worth noting are the journey phases/timeline and the resulting emotions elements.  These are the two that I feel best capture the design process in the journey map.

The journey phases/timeline details the unique steps that a person/a may go through when using the product or service.  These are generally the same for everybody, with some steps added on to the beginning or the end.  Some steps may not apply to everyone either.  The emotions aspect ties directly into the empathy step of the design process.  It is important to remember that what the customer feels towards, and while using the product or service is the most vital piece of feedback that a company might receive.

For my own version of a journey map, I picked the scenario of going to the doctor.  The persona, Paige started not feeling good so she had to go through the steps of booking an appointment, seeing a doctor, picking up her prescription and taking the medicine for her to start feeling better.

View Paige’s complete journey map below: