The User Journey
A Powerful Tool for Attaining Empathy
Empathy. It’s the key to successful product strategy and design. Through user empathy, we find unanswered questions, unmet needs, and idea-catalyzing behaviors. When we attain it, we are able to go deeper than what pricey quantitative and syndicated data will ever tell us, and reach a profound level of behavioral and cognitive understanding.
But how do we reach that level of user knowledge? How can we look for the right observations during UX research that lead us to it? In my experience, one fruitful way in is the study and documentation of the consumer journey.
A View into Behavioral Patterns
Patterns permeate cognition. In Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman warns us about our tendency to succumb to the “narrative fallacy.” Our minds very much like to find patterns or associations in effort to more efficiently store and retrieve information. Just think about something as simple as the alphabet:
MNOPQRABGHIJKLVWXYSTUZCDEF
Yes, that’s the alphabet. Try to read it and rehearse it back in that sequence with your eyes closed. Good luck. We need the pattern, and associated mnemonic ditty, to remember it accurately. The same thing occurs with behaviors.
We learn and store behaviors in sequences and habitual patterns. Thus, gaining insight into the steps that comprise these behavioral patterns can really help us achieve user empathy in product strategy.
Gathering the Right Data
To start us off in the right direction, here’s what we need to dig for:
- Prospective or Current Product/Service Touchpoints
- Micro- and Macro-Objectives (for users)
- Pain/Friction Points
- Emotional Trends
We can find these via both qualitative and quantitative research methods, but in product design, we should start with firsthand observation. Conducting one-on-one, end-to-end experience observation sessions is the most fertile technique, especially in a design exercise. However, we can get there with a mix of techniques and supplement resource-intensive observation sessions with surveys, syndicated data, and social listening. Just know, as popularized by Harvard Business School Professors Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey F. Rayport’s expositions on “Empathetic Design,” we won’t likely find an innovative design solution if we just listen to what users tell us.
Now, Draw It
Once we find the data, we must identify the behavioral pattern. Beware of the sneaky narrative fallacy in this exercise. We have to take care to depict the true behavioral sequence our users undertake.
The artifact that becomes the consumer journey can be thoroughly designed, or it can just be a sequence of sticky notes or doodles. That part doesn’t matter — although people are, indeed, heavily influenced by aesthetics. But that’s a topic for another article…
The consumer journey artifact simply must convey that behavioral pattern, and include the necessary information to prompt design ideation. Touchpoints, objectives, pains, and emotions. TOPE…should you want a nice lil’ mnemonic.
;-)
Some Final Remarks
I’ve found the study of the consumer journey to be an invaluable step in approaching the design of a new or modified product or experience. I hope this serves as a helpful tool to attain user empathy in your current or next product design project! Please feel free to reach out with questions, ideas, or to nerd-out on product strategy & design: patrick@makerandmuster.com. Or visit my site to see some more consumer journey examples: makerandmuster.com.
