Natural language (written) user journeys

Process & Techniques
#1

Hi,

I’ve been doing some simple user journeys in a flow chart form and have been asked to write some natural language user journeys to go with them.

natural language user journeys are not something I have done before so was wondering if anyone here has any examples they could share.

Virtual doughnuts for anyone who does.

1 Like
#2

Any ideas @melanie_seibert, @ruth or @AshleaMcKay ?

1 Like
#3

Thanks for pinging me @HAWK. :slight_smile:

First off, I’ve never heard the term “natural language user journey” before.

But that said, we do something that might be similar to what you’re being asked for. I can describe it for you, but sadly I don’t think I can share actual ones because they’re all confidential.

Basically one of our strategists will tell a story (usually in Keynote slides) with animated characters. So it would be like:

  • The kids are hungry and Sarah’s not sure what to make. (Animated image of mom and kids.)
  • Sarah pulls out her Recipes app. (Screenshot of the app.)
  • She searches for “kid-friendly” recipes and finds Chicken Fingers. Everyone would love that! (Screenshot of her favoriting the Chicken Fingers recipe.)
    etc.

It goes on until the story resolves. It’s typically a “happy path” showing a concept and how it would work under ideal circumstances.

That’s the closest thing I can think of to what you’re asking for. Let me know if you find any more detail about it, it sounds interesting!

Melanie

6 Likes
#4

Me neither! And unfortunately I also can’t share anything that I’ve worked on either because they’re all protected by NDAs and security related restrictions.

I think @melanie_seibert’s example is good - so much of what we do is about telling a human story that people can empathise with and understand and I don’t think this would be any different :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#5

Hi @rachelreveley
I think “natural language user journeys” could mean that the journey is described from the user’s perspective in language that they would use. For example, I was working on a user journey many years ago for a government department that used a particular term to describe a payment, but citizens would use the term “baby bonus” instead. So if I was creating the user journey, I would be reflecting the end user’s language in that instance (but I also tend to start shifting towards a service map and align the user’s end language with internal language and flows, depending upon what you need to convey).
Hope this makes sense!

4 Likes
#6

It was pretty much that but without the fancy animation.Like a mini novel annotating the flow chart.

4 Likes
#7

Thanks for the replies. I was worried it might be more complex or different to what it sounded like.

2 Likes
#8

Thanks for the update about what it is. Interesting!

3 Likes