Capturing user needs to inform your design

Method 1: Journey maps

What

A journey map visualizes the major interactions that shape a user's experience of a product or service.

Why

Journey maps help you see the full user journey and the sequence of interactions that make up a user's experience. They highlight the complexity, successes, pain points, and emotions users experience from every phase.

How to do it

1. Document the elements of the project's design context. This includes the:
   • People involved and their related goals
   • Behaviors in pursuit of their goals
   • Information, devices, and services that support their behaviors
   • Important moments in how they experience a service or major decisions they make
   • Emotions associated with these moments or decisions
   • Potential harms, such as financial penalties, anxiety, or damaged reputation, associated with these moments or decisions
2. Visualize the order in which people: 
   • Exhibit behaviors
   • Use information
   • Make decisions
   • Feel emotions
3. Group elements into a table of “phases” related to the personal narrative of each persona. Identify where personas share contextual components.
4. Discuss the journey map with stakeholders. Point out insights it offers.
5. Use these insights to establish design principles. Think about how to collapse or accelerate a customer’s journey through the various phases. Incorporate this information into the project’s scope.

Method 2: Service blueprints

What

A service blueprint shows how a service works across systems and operations.

Why

Service blueprints help you clarify relationships between systems and processes. By communicating the full complexity of a service, they also help you find opportunities for improvement.

Service blueprints are different from journey maps, which are created from the perspective of the user.

How to do it

1. Gather information on the service through desk research and user, staff, and stakeholder interviews.
2. Create a diagram with four rows:
   • User steps: the primary action someone takes when interacting with the service.
   • Frontstage actions: the online and offline interactions that users have with the service. Include people, places where interactions occur, and physical or virtual objects that users interact with, like forms.
   • Backstage actions: activities in the systems and processes that support the frontstage experience, but are not visible to users
   • Support processes: activities executed by the rest of the organization or external partners that don't fall into the other rows. This could be ongoing data management of software licensing.
3. Map the flow of each user interaction through the service. Be sure to note: 
   • Critical points and interactions in delivering the service
   • Any opportunities to handle interactions more efficiently or that would result in a better user experience

Time required

4 to 12 hours