UX Research Portfolio

Customer Journey Maps

I’ve designed a few customer journey maps as part of the deliverables to a large innovation project. This work is part of a consortium formed by two academic institutions and four industry partners named CLoSeR. The collaborative nature of this research requires synergy between academia and external organisations, combining research methods to better inform the production of innovation that could improve user experiences.

One common way to understand and visualise UX is through the design of Customer Journey Maps, which are graphical representations of one’s encounters with the products, services or systems. These diagrams usually contain different stages of the journey, user actions and emotions. The map displays the ‘touchpoints’ for each main point of contact between the user and the system, where some sort of interaction took place.

The process for designing customer journey maps involves collecting
qualitative data, usually through interviews, where participants report the significant occurrences and issues during the interaction with the product, service or system. Interview transcripts are then subject to a thematic analysis, and these themes inform the elements that define the touchpoints in question. It is also possible to obtain opinions from participants using questionnaires handed to the target population.

Prior to the design of the maps, an iterative process using traditional felt tip pens and post-it notes complemented the computational qualitative data analysis performed using the software NVivo.

Passenger customer journey map

The map below shows the experience of train passengers from the moment they start planning and purchasing tickets until when they alight at the destination station.

Customer journey map of train passengers in the UK. The line over the green and red bands represent the ‘affect’, from happy to sad, over the different touchpoints with the system. Previously presented at the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) Conference in Cincinnati, OH, USA. It’s published and available via the link http://doi.org/10.7945/C2R388

Crew journey map

Another example present a similar touchpoint to represent the experiences of crew members. It’s important to note that crew will have different touchpoints to passengers, and different mood and affect at each of them.

Crew journey map, as published in the article “Journey mapping from a crew’s perspective: Understanding rail experiences”, available on Applied Ergonomics, via the link https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2020.103063

Customer journey map and persona integration

In the example below we also aggregated information about two personas, which were created in parallel. This way, we had the chance to indicate where their experiences differ, and it suggested how the system should be designed to cater for both types of crew.

This image highlights a part of the crew journey map where the lines represent two personas (Samantha and Charles) and also the average mood / affect during their work routines. We can see that there are a few differences in experiences, indicating preferences in relation to these touchpoints.