User Journeys

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“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci, frickin genius.

Purpose of a User Journey

Every user-need, every Use Case in every Service, has a set of steps required to complete it and deal with any complications, dependencies, conditional behaviour, errors or options along the way. None should escape us.

User Journeys define the specific behaviours we use to create testable Prototypes that allow the user to experience those paths and outcomes.

(User Journeys are simplicity achieved through thoughtful and sophisticated analysis and consideration of all that is required to achieve to goal of a Use Case)

User Journeys allow us to map out every one of the steps in a Use Case, from initiation to goal achievement, including the happy and unhappy paths (conditional dependencies and possible errors or options) that can occur while the user attempts to complete the Use Case – to its valuable conclusion.

NB. You will notice that my User Journeys are also encapsulated within Agile User Story references so that the PM, Scrum Master or developer can easily reference and check them against the Story requirements.

“You don’t understand the system until you understand how it fails.” – Richard Cook, safety engineer and resilience researcher

It is worth spending time considering these early on (rather than after a solution has gone live) because the user becomes frustrated with lazy, ill-considered solution logic that makes goal completion difficult or impossible.

“People ignore design that ignores people.” – Frank Chimero, designer

Ultimately, all your Use Cases should fit together into a perfect jigsaw of the project’s purpose, and each Use Case should be visible as a comprehensive and optimised set of steps that we call a User Journey.
In turn, a prototype should be the manifestation of the purpose and behaviour outlined in teh User Journey it brings to life.

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Value of a User Journey 

1. Shows the optimal way for the user to get from task initiation to task goal
2. Highlights and mitigates all what-ifs (eg. “What if I forget my password?”)
3. Creates a complete set of logical steps and conditional dependencies that developers can intuitively turn into optimal code
4. Functionality, behaviour, optimisation, systems capability and optimal goal achievement can be mapped and validated (collaboratively) early on, before the expense of even prototyping, never mind development
5. The approved and complete User Journey can be quickly and reliably turned into a prototype that can then be tested with the users againt all conditions and the delivery of its purpose
6. Allows Problem Solvers to demonstrate to stakeholders and delivery teams, the time, cost and efficiency improvements from the AS-IS state of a current user need, to the TO-BE, future state.
7. User Journeys (along with the functional Prototype and the functional User Stories) can be given to the developers as a pack of clear and comprehensive development guidelines that require no changes and can help them deliver right-first-time.

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Examples

NB. For security clearance and NDA reasons, some elements of the example files may be redacted, changed or removed.