Journey Mapping

Tools
#1

Hello,

My organisation is looking into purchasing some new tools to map user journeys as well as demonstrate to stakeholders how users actually use a website. What are the best tools you’ve used for mapping, recording or sharing user experiences for analysis and showing to stakeholders elsewhere in an organisation?

Thinking along the lines of showing from analytics and demonstrating with video or in an engaging way to non-digital stakeholders, as well as mapping our customer’s overall experience ahead of an advertising campaign.

Thanks.

#2

Greetings,

For all the journey maps that we create, we export to images and then if you want to share them, put them into presentations. So we’ve used omnigraffle, or even illustrator etc to make them in the first place. But if you want to make more creative journey maps, you could even try what Matt and Luke did with recording sketch stories (see an example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovj4hFxko7c).

For recording user experience with real websites:
You can either do this in an informative or summative way. So for informative, you might for instance do in-person testing, where you set someone tasks to complete, and then you record the screen with a screen capture program. You would also write notes down as they go.

For summative google analytics can be good for some, but you really need to back them up with what you got from the informative studies, as they don’t really tell you why things happened, just that something seems to be occurring.

I personally believe that if you want to show analytics etc to non-digital stakeholders you need to make it interesting and look nice, not just a whole lot of statistics and bullet points. So either having short video clips, highlighting main points, or nice infographics with what you found out can be a good start. Something more along the lines of the sketch story may be a lot more interesting than an image on a piece of paper, but it really does depend on your audience type as well.

Does anyone else on here have experience using good software for analytics testing of websites?

#3

I wrote a blog post about communicating findings a while back that you might find interesting. It includes a few of Natalie’s suggestions, plus some others:

• 5 Alternatives To Slide Decks For Communicating Findings

I think having a big poster on the wall is a great talking point. Even better would be to include the stakeholders you’re presenting it to in a full-day workshop to collaboratively create that journey map. The only tools you’d need then would be post-its and markers, and some large sheets of paper. Read more about creating experience maps here and here.

Hope that helps!

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#4

Hi and thanks Natalie and Matt for such great responses! All really helpful stuff.

I’ll need to investigate Omnigraffle a bit more but I suspect I’m going to have to tool up with Illustrator or something eventually. Prezi looks quite good too, so I’ll have a look at finding the right combination. Adding in real-world user videos would definitely help with buy-in. I think some ideal combination of those, along with a good live dashboard of key metrics would be the ideal for communicating with stakeholders. The infographics are a great way to communicate some of the understandning but quite time consuming when you’re a small team (and not graphic designers).

I’d love to do the doodles like yours Matt but even learning some commion objects I think I’d need an industrial sized bucket of correction fluid like you suggest in your post! Might have to be more of a long-term aim :slight_smile:

Are there any tools or add-ons you’d recommend for screen capture? I’ve been using Screenflow up till now.

Thanks again!

#5

Hahahahah love it! :slight_smile:

My co-workers and stakeholders expect me to use illustrator and then PDF it or even use powerpoint because they don’t always have access to illustrator let alone know how to use it and powerpoint means anyone can modify it. I think it depends on the working environment. I work in a multidisciplinary team that deals with people from business areas of the organisation that just aren’t designers.

I like Prezi I think it’s cool :slight_smile:

I use infographics a lot and I’m not a graphic designer (industrial designer) but I’ve had a lot of practice and they are time consuming when you first get started! Or when you get stuck which happens a lot… LOL

#6

Been a short while but I’m now having a look at trying to Prezi some user journeys… like the way it works but not totally sure how to present my data in the best way possible. Just wondered if anyone’s seen any particularly good Prezi examples of conveying user journeys through it? (or even has an example they’d like to share).

p.s. It’s a shame it doesn’t include live data, that could be amazing! :slight_smile:

#7

I found this Prezi on HOW to create user journeys… not quite what you’re after!
Then I found this one, which is pretty cute.

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