Journey maps visualize the process that a user goes through to accomplish a goal. They provide a holistic view of the customer experience, highlighting both positive and negative moments from the user’s point-of-view.

Leading a journey-mapping initiative is no small challenge. It takes product knowledge and research savvy, along with project- and stakeholder-management skills. To learn about journey mapping in practice, we surveyed more than 300 UX professionals on their journey-mapping experiences. Within that group, 206 respondents shared advice for people creating a journey map for the first time. In this article, we’ve consolidated the advice into 27 tips relevant not only to those getting started with journey mapping, but to all practitioners who want to learn from their peers’ knowledge. We grouped these into 6 categories:  learning about journey mapping, defining goals, gathering and conducting research, collaborating on the map, visualizing and communicating the journey, and bonus words of encouragement.

 Getting Started with Journey Mapping

  1. Educate yourself on journey-mapping fundamentals. Learning the basics can save you time in the long run because you’ll learn about common faults and pain points to avoid. One participant advises, “Educate yourself on various approaches, methods, and templates in order to make the right choices for your project.” If you’re looking to get started, we’ve published extensive content on customer journeys and even facilitate a course on creating and using customer-journey maps.
  2. Practice in a low-stakes environment. Once you understand the fundamentals, find ways to practice your approach and learn from your experience. One respondent recommended creating a journey map for something personally familiar, such as a recent, memorable experience. They wrote, “try it out on yourself and something you do and are familiar with.” For example, you might create a journey map documenting your journey to set up a new smart-home device.
  3. Research existing industry journey maps for inspiration. Search for case studies and artifacts relevant to your context. A quick search can return valuable examples that may inform project planning, communication, and scope or help you learn about communication formats that will work for your context.

Defining Goals, Team, and Scope

  1. Set expectations for how the map will be used before starting. As you create a team and build buy-in, set clear expectations for the outcome. Journey maps are not created solely for visualizing the experience; they’re intended to help evaluate and improve it. One respondent commented, “Don’t expect it to solve everything. It’s one tool in a sea of many […] It’s up to you to use it to inform decision making.” As you sell journey mapping to your stakeholders, highlight the evaluative benefits, not just the visualization benefits.
  2. Spend time defining the objectives. Why are you creating a journey map and what do you hope to get out of it? Your goals should be clear and well documented. Share these goals with your stakeholders so you’re all on the same page. A participant notes, “make sure to outline the purpose of the journey map” while another respondent wrote, “define what is the question you need to answer.”
  3. Start with a small, focused scope. We recommend starting with a focused journey with known pain points and feasible quick wins that the team has authority to change. One participant commented, “Pick a very small project with easy to achieve, low-hanging–fruit outcomes.” With a small, focused scope, it’s likely that pain points uncovered during the initiative will be addressed.
  4. Accept that you can’t (and shouldn’t) map everything. Journey mapping is a great tool, but you can’t map everything at once. It wouldn’t be a good use of your time. You’d end up spending more time visualizing the pain points than solving them. Relatedly, one participant advises “Start small and scale. Accept that you don't map or `save’ everything.” Prioritize journeys with a significant impact on your experience so you can work on improving high-impact pain points.
  5. Involve a crossfunctional team. When deciding whom to involve in the initiative, consider the stakeholders or departments that play a role in the experience of the journey to be mapped. Crossfunctional journey-mapping teams often include people from engineering, marketing, sales, and customer support. As one respondent put it, “Do not make it alone. Speak to people who make the journey. Involve people who have to do something with the results.”
  6. Build a team of influencers and knowledge holders. One respondent said, “Figure out who has sway and influence and include them at early stages of this process!” Your core team should include well-respected influencers who can increase the visibility and positive perception of the initiative and knowledge holders with direct knowledge of the experience being mapped.
  7. Keep your stakeholders engaged. As one participant recommends, “share progress early and often.” Stay connected with stakeholders by involving them in relevant conversations and activities like research studies and workshops.
  8. Iterate and don't let perfectionism drag you down. This is an iterative process, so adapt and iterate your map as needed. One survey respondent said, “start small and understand you will make many revisions. Don't try to get it perfect the first time.”
  9. Focus on action and outcomes. As one participant said, “Have a plan for what you are going to do with the information to make it actionable. It doesn’t do any good to hang the map above the copy machine and expect everyone to know how that impacts their job/function.” In other words, the goal isn’t just creating the artifact, but acting on findings to improve the experience.

Gathering and Conducting Research

  1. Document assumptions and use them to argue for new research. Don’t let lack of buy-in for initial research derail your mapping goals. One respondent recommended, “start[ing] with assumptions if you can't get user interviews so that you can communicate the need for research.” Starting your mapping process by asking stakeholders to share already known insights or hypotheses can reveal gaps that require additional research. Another participant recommended that practitioners “start by mapping quickly the existing experience based on internal team feedback” before following up with additional user research.
  2. Know your users and your product. Journey maps require real user data to be effective. As one participant wrote, “Understand the user as well as the problem before you start solutioning.”  A basic map with the right insights is better than an extensive map based on assumptions.
  3. Use mixed methods to understand the full picture. The best research methods for journey mapping are qualitative methods. Even small-sample qualitative studies can give profound insights into what users do, think, and feel throughout a journey. Quantitative methods (e.g., analytics) can be used as a second step to show the scale of key insights or add additional evidence for your recommendations. On this subject, a respondent commented, “start rough and use qualitative methods to go deeper. Put steps into perspective by adding quantitative metrics.”

Collaborating on the Map

  1. Make the process collaborative. There are immense benefits to creating journey maps collaboratively in a workshop environment. This approach takes considerable coordination and planning, so communicate expectations to management early on and explain why you need help. One participant recommends, “start with a simple 1-hour workshop with the most important internal resources and keep the map low fidelity on paper or a whiteboard.” Workshops involve everyone in the process and create buy-in.
  2. Asynchronous collaboration is better than no collaboration. This type of collaboration allows people to contribute to your map when it’s convenient for them to do so. For one method of doing this, a participant recommends, “Start a spreadsheet and find an ally who can help fill it in.” If getting everyone together for a workshop isn’t possible, this option might work for you: consider using the template we published for remote journey mapping.
  3. Involve end users in the process. Creating a journey map with an end user saves time without sacrificing insights. For example, you could have participants document their experience using sticky notes (or a digital equivalent) to create a quick, low-fidelity journey map. After the session, these artifacts can be refined and added to data from other sources. Such participatory-design sessions are especially useful for complex domain-specific workflows.

Visualizing and Communicating the Journey

  1. Start low fidelity. Journey mapping is an iterative process, so don’t expect to create a high-fidelity map early on in the process. One respondent suggested: “Lay it out on a wall or huge piece of paper using sticky notes. That makes it easy to re-think, re-do, and move things around.” Whether you’re working in person or remotely, use materials and tools that support iterating and moving things around.
  2. Use a template. Multiple participants recommended using a template to save time when creating the artifact, saying things like “use a baseline template to get started.” Journey maps don’t have to be works of art; often a simple spreadsheet template can be incredibly useful for tight timelines or iterative work. When selecting a template, be mindful of format and the potential bias certain tools may introduce — people unfamiliar with a tool will be unlikely to contribute.
  3. Keep it simple. The idea of focusing the artifact was mentioned by several respondents. Aim to provide a clear overview of key moments within the journey, rather than documenting every discrete interaction. As one participant put it, “It’s really easy to go down a rabbit hole and get stuck in the weeds.” Instead of attempting to record all the potential interactions and overlapping journeys, try to focus on one path at a time. Keep the conversation — and your recommendations — focused on the main journey being evaluated.
  4. Prioritize content over graphics. Polished graphic design is not the main focus of your journey map. One participant wrote, “ignore the fancy versions you see online, the content is core, not the graphics.” Yes, good visual design is important in that it assists the reader in consuming the content, but the content in the map should be the priority. Before jumping to complex visual tools, get your content ready and validated in an easy-to-edit, accessible format.
  5. Provide recommendations. Don’t just point out what’s wrong with the experience; provide some insight! As one participant put it, “Find the pain and the gain.” Another described: “[The map] is a communication tool…for you to create and finetune your experience,” not just an exhaustive log of problems to be addressed.
  6. Pilot your journey map. Before presenting your map, ask a colleague or team member to view and explain key takeaways from the artifact. One participant wrote, “Ask a colleague or team member to have a pre-client/stakeholder demo so you can work out as many kinks as possible.” This type of exercise will help reveal points of confusion ahead of time. For example, if there are certain terms or icons used that people don’t understand, you have an opportunity to change them or remove them before sharing the artifact widely.
  7. Optimize your presentation for the audience. One participant recommends, “make two versions —[a] detailed one for [the] design team and [a] simple one for management.” Don’t be afraid to create custom versions for specific audiences, to highlight insights that are relevant for that group. This approach will result in a compelling presentation tailored for your audience.

Final Thoughts and Words of Encouragement

  1. Be patient and persistent. Initiatives like this require a team effort. Be patient with competing motives and persistent about evaluating and improving the experience. Journey mapping requires substantial effort, but as one participant said, “[It’s] worth the effort, and you'll get better with each one you do.” Stay motivated and home in on the outcomes.
  2. “Do the best you can with the tools and buy-in you have,” a great closing thought from one respondent. Your first-time journey mapping might not be perfect, but it will be a valuable learning experience. Apply your learnings over subsequent mapping initiatives to improve and perfect your craft.

Conclusion

Journey mapping is not new, and many teams have struggled, stumbled, succeeded, and sometimes even failed at it. No single case study can tell you what to do in your specific situation, which is why we research best practices across hundreds of UX projects. This distillation of lessons learned by many teams will position your mapping initiative for success.

Learn more in our full day course, Journey Mapping to Understand Customer Needs.