If you’ve had some experience with User Experience or Service Design, chances are you’ve already heard of Journey Maps and have an idea of what it is.
In a nutshell, Journey Mapping can be an essential and invaluable tool that you can use to understand your customer’s involvement with your app.
It begins with the list of activities the user has to go through to complete a certain task. From the signup process all the way to closing the app. The Map illustrates how your customers feel (based on real life trials) while doing each activity, which is represented by points on a graph indicating a positive, negative, or indifferent disposition during a specific activity.
Creating a journey map can be tough and time consuming, but there is some serious power in creating one. It removes barriers that prevents your customers to do what you want them to do. It identifies the gaps and creates clarity within the organization.
Here are some ways journey maps can benefit your app:
1 Solve real problems your customers are facing.
Most of the time, we create and design apps based on our own assumptions and past experiences. We think about how we will carry out certain functions of the app, and translate those ideas into projects. What we fail to realize is that their customers might be thinking something else.
Journey Maps are meant to highlight the low and high points in a customer’s experience. This allows developers and designers to understand the customer’s pain points while using the app. It’s a great way to understand what problems your customers are really facing, versus what problems you assume they are experiencing.
2 Learn your app’s strengths and weaknesses.
Aside from identifying what problems your customers face, Journey Maps also help you understand how to use your app. It brings about different insights (sometimes good, other times bad), which you should use to guide your decisions.
At some point, you think you built the app for personality A, but you find out personality B actually uses it more. You might have built the app the solve problem C, but missed the bigger problem D. Or sometimes you might think that your app lacks in aspect X, but is actually perfectly effective the way it already is!
Find out what your customers love and what they hate. These kinds of realizations can guide you in deciding where to take an action in developing your app or what part to focus on.
3. Be the best that you can.
Journey Mapping can show you points of improvement in the app, and sometimes even in the organization itself. The most powerful way to maintain and grow your customers is to provide them with something great.
Every improvement makes a big impact, and even the smallest details can make a difference. Always ask yourself “how might we improve our service?” and you’ll realize that in a more specified element in the entire experience, Journey Maps might tell you the answer
