Journey through user experience thinking

After 7 weeks of exploring the ins and outs of user experience design, this week I ended on a very fun and enjoyable activity: Journey mapping.

Creating a journey map is an excellent tool that can be applied to any process you’re curious about. Journey maps are a visual interpretation of the thought and action process behind doing something. These processes can include: buying a coffee, registering to vote, opening a bank account, buying a car, learning to ride a bike, and plenty more. This week I focused my journey map on putting up a Christmas Tree.

I focused the map on the client, Abby, who is a busy mom of 3 and a wife. She wants to spend more time with her family and bring them together. She wants to plan an activity, such as putting up their Christmas tree that would make her family bond more.

To start, I outlined Abby’s persona and then outlined the emotions key and the actions and channels key. This helped me to determine at which points in the process Abby was feeling anxious, happy, sad, etc. After this, I drew out visuals representing each step in the process. See the image below:

This map clearly outlines each step and each emotion that goes into this process. By determining how Abby may feel throughout each step, I was able to identify some areas that we can look for solutions to her negative feelings.

For example, Abby feels very anxious that the Christmas tree is going to fall off the roof of the car when they’re driving home. By zoning in on this step, I thought about an idea where the Christmas tree farms could provide a same-day delivery service so that customers like Abby don’t have to worry about this. This delivery service would be a big truck where the trees could safely fit inside, therefore eliminating the worry about it falling off and onto the road.

Additionally, Abby also feels anxious about her ornaments breaking while they’re putting them up. Because of this, another idea sparked in my head of a break-free/resistant carpet to put under the Christmas tree. This way, if any ornaments fall or if anyone drops one, the break-free carpet will prevent it from shattering and ruining a priceless memory or hurting someone.

As you can see, journey mapping is an excellent tool for zoning in on each process and finding areas where the process can be improved/made easier. This is great for inventing and designing new things for customers. I really enjoyed getting to learn how to do this and I look forward to applying it to more aspects of my life.