DESCRIPTION
Map the user’s experience end-to-end and identify their emotions, touchpoints, contexts enabling you to tell the story of “what they go through”, uncovering their pain, delight and opportunities to design from the user’s journey forward.
This method describes for the first time how to storytell “User Journey Mapping” in a framework where you visualize and narrate a user’s (or customer’s) path through a product, service, or system, capturing phases, actions, emotions, touchpoints, and contexts in order to build empathy, surface opportunities, and align stakeholders. The storytelling component emphasizes not just the sequence of steps but the narrative arc of the user: what they feel, what they expect, what breaks, where it breaks and what changes. Its USP is that it brings the often abstract “user experience” into a tangible story: rather than a list of features or metrics or a link to personas and order gridding approaches, you see a user as a protagonist with a journey, you see the episodes, conflicts, resolutions. This makes it more memorable, more actionable, and aligns cross-functional teams around the user as it focusses 100% on the story the user is having. It is widely used in UX design, service design, product strategy, change communication, internal alignment workshops.
ORIGIN
Even thought this method is described by Manuel Kirailidis on story53 as a storytelling method for the first time, the method of journey mapping has its roots in user-experience and service design: a typical “user journey map” is “a visualization of the journey a customer takes with a product… a story that visualizes actions on a timeline.”. The term “user journey mapping” has been formalized in UX literature describing the steps and emotional states a user go through while using a certain service, product, commodity, etc.
USED BY
Typically by UX- and service-design teams mapping full experience flows and identifying pain points. and product or strategy teams aligning user-centered narratives and planning features with correspondent communication teams.
Approximately needed time
- Step 1: 1 hours
- Step 2: 2 hours
- Step 3: 2 hours
- Step 4: 1 hours
- Step 5: 1 hours
- TOTAL: 7 hours (multiple channel alignment +5-6 hours)
METHOD
MATERIAL YOU COULD NEED: Large paper sheets and a lot of markers. 😉
STEPS
PERSONAS AND SCENARIOS
You need to know who you are mapping, under what scenario, and what part of the journey to focus on (entire lifecycle, onboarding, retention etc.). Without this clarity the map may be too broad, vague, or misaligned.
Select a primary persona: demographic and psychographic, behaviors, motivations.
Define the scenario: e.g., “first time user downloading our app”, “customer seeking support after purchase” etc. and agree on scope: full end-to-end or a segment, offline vs online channels, timeframe, etc.
Example: Persona: “Mia, 28, busy professional, downloads our meal-planning app after a friend’s recommendation, wants to plan weekly meals under 30 minutes.”
MAP PHASES AND TOUCHPOINTS
To tell the story, you need to map out what the user actually does: the phases and steps they go through and where they touch your service and product. This creates the backbone of the narrative.
Define phases and list, under each phase, the touchpoints (channels, actions) the user experiences: homepage, download, login, support chat, etc. to map chronologically from left to right (or top to bottom) in the visual. Find proper potential narratives describing the situations and add them to the map.
Example: For Mia: She discovers the app on a social media platform. She downloads it, tries it out and makes her first meal plan and the recipes by cooking the suggestions as described and then shares feedback to the the social media platform.
EMOTION AND THOUGHTS CONTEXT
Adding what users feel, think, and where or when they act, turns the map from a flat flow into a story with human resonance. It surfaces pain, delight, friction, motivation.
For each touchpoint map the user’s emotional state (e.g., excited, confused, frustrated, satisfied) and describe it. Capture thoughts or quotes of what they thinki or say. Include context like device, location, channel, environment to ground experience and starte writing the story.
Example: At setup phase, Mia may feels hopeful but overwhelmed, thinking “Will it take too long?”
FRICTIONS, OPPORTUNITIES AND BREAKPOINTS
Identifying where the journey breaks, where emotion dips or spikes, where opportunity lies, is key to designing improvements and narratives. These become the story beats (conflict, turning point, resolution). Highlight pain points, drop-off points, unexpected behaviors and mark the “moments of truth” or delight.
Brainstorm opportunities: what could improve journey? What story could emerge?
Example: Mia drops off during first meal plan because options feel overwhelming. The opportunity: simplify selection. Story-beat: “Mia feels lost in choices, we streamline to three suggested plans in seconds.”
VALIDATE AND CREATE
Review map with users and stakeholders and adjust as needed.
Craft a narrative: “Meet Mia → this is her quest → here’s the problem → here’s our solution → here’s how the journey changes.” and define next steps: what improvements will be made, which touchpoints will be prioritized, how metrics will be tracked. Do so in storytelling mode instead of just going thru a “map”.
Example: Present the story to product the team with some narrative slides: “Mia’s 7-step journey” with respective story progression.
Journey mapping is described as “a story that visualizes actions on a timeline”, emphasising storytelling nature. From what we see, the emotional and context dimensions of journey maps are key differentiators.
One source reports that “1–2 hours of group mapping and discussion” can create a first draft journey map. It’s important to keep maps readable and actionable: avoid over-cluttering with too many detail layers. Journey maps often feed into strategic prioritization, service redesign, feature roadmap rather than being ends in themselves.
