User Journeys and Touch Points
In the Design Thinking process, User Journey is a graphical representation of the customer relationship stages with a product or service, which describes the steps taken before, during and after purchase and use.
The User Journey is important to understand the client’s relationship with the company, from the decision to purchase the product / service, to its discard. By mapping these steps, it is possible to analyse the expectations of the consumer at each moment, in order to create ways to better serve and surprise him, at different stages of the process.
Types of contact:
Each touch point is a step in the process and can be combined into a different category, such as linear, non-linear / time-based, or non-linear / ongoing.
In the user’s journey map the touch points will occur in both the real and the virtual world. A physical channel, for example, could be an advertisement on the TV, and the digital one would be the advertisement on Facebook.
Understanding the touch points and the journey map is important for creating a good user experience. It is an iterative process that have to be revised until the information collected can be used to create relevant and efficient designs.
They are physical and digital. The importance of understanding the holistic of the journey can help us during UX’s journey to select the key digital touch points, highlight it, create a concise user goal, and a set of pages that reflects that. In the end, this will be tested through realistic and specific scenarios.
Leandro Costa is a Brazilian creative developer based in Dublin and working as front-end developer & designer at Boys and Girls.
