How user journeys can enhance your product strategy
Unlocking product success with user journey mapping
Product Designers and Product Managers, are you tired of struggling to create products that truly resonate with your users? Do you often find yourself or your team guessing what your users really want and need, only to end up with disappointing results? It's time to put an end to the frustration and take control of your product strategy.
Are you ready to improve your products and create exceptional user experiences? User journey mapping is the key!
As a Product Design Manager at OpenClassrooms, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful user journey mapping can be in improving the design and overall success of products. It’s a technique that helps you understand the needs and behavior of your users as they interact with your products and services.
In this article, I’ll guide you through the steps of user journey mapping and provide practical tips and resources to enhance your product strategy and create a seamless user experience. Learn how to align your company strategy with user journeys and continuously improve your product.
1 . Understanding User Needs and behavior through Personas and Characters
The first step in user journey mapping is to understand your users. To do this effectively, you can use two valuable tools: personas and characters (also called archetypes). However, it’s important to distinguish between them and know when to use each one.
Personas are representations of specific user groups or target audiences. They are based on real users and provide detailed insights into their goals, needs, and behaviors. Personas create empathy by humanizing users, making them relatable to stakeholders, for instance. This tool is commonly used in the early stages of the design process to understand different user types and tailor products to their specific requirements.
On the other hand, characters represent broader user experiences and are used to uncover underlying motivations and desires. They are more neutral and scientific, focusing on the essence of a user type or user experience. Characters are primarily created and used by designers to imagine products and solutions that resonate with users on a deeper level, going beyond surface-level preferences.
Here are some examples that may help you understand the difference between both tools.
When collecting data about your users, you gather information such as user pain points, feedback, and interview quotes. These insights help you understand their frustrations, motivations, and needs. Additionally, considering the situational context of your users, such as their location and other influencing factors, allows you to gain a comprehensive understanding of their experiences with your product.
The choice between using personas or characters depends on the specific product and user journey you are addressing. Personas create a connection and empathy with individual users, while characters provide a more analytical and abstract perspective. By leveraging the strengths of both approaches, you can effectively design products that meet the diverse needs of your users and enhance their overall experience.
At OpenClassrooms, we employ characters when there is a need to expose different branches of an experience that pertains to the same user group. For example, the enrollement experience differs for a candidate who has already secured an apprenticeship position compared to one who hasn’t. The candidate who hasn’t found a position yet may benefit from OpenClassrooms coaching sessions, while the candidate who has already secured a position can proceed directly to finalizing their application. In such cases, leveraging the granularity of characters allows us to consider both experiences effectively.
If you want to know more about how to manage UX Research at OpenClassrooms, Audrey Hacq made a nice article about it 👇.
2 . Mapping the User Journey and Identifying Opportunities for Improvement
Now that you’ve characterised your users, it’s time to map out their journey with your product or service. A common tool used for this purpose is the user journey map, which visually represents the steps that a user takes while interacting with your product.
If you’ve never done user journey mapping before, here’s some resources to get you started easily👇.
To create a user journey map, start by identifying the key stages of the user experience you want to focus on. Then, map out the specific steps that a user takes at each stage, including any pain points or points of friction. You can also group user pain points by persona or character to identify patterns and trends in user behavior and get a sense of the key needs and goals of different user groups.
At this stage, in order to save time and focus, I generally recommend to my team to concentrate on facts only, not hypotheses.
Tip: start illustrating users’ pain points with short verbatims. This makes it easier for everyone to understand. Exemple:
“In fact, for me, apprenticeship was reserved for those under 30.
3 . Generate insights through data
One important aspect of user journey mapping is detecting drop-offs and exit rates in the user journey. These metrics can help you identify points in the user journey where users are disengaging with your product or abandoning their tasks.
There are several tools that you can use to track drop-offs and exit rates, such as Google Analytics, ContentSquare or Amplitude for example. These tools allow you to see how users are interacting with your product and where they are dropping off in the user journey.
By combining data on drop-offs with user pain points that you have identified, you can create insights into areas where the user experience may be frustrating or confusing. This means cross-referencing qualitative data with quantitative data. In other words, it helps explain the reasons behind the drop-offs.
These insights can then be prioritized based on their impact, with the most significant drop-offs taking priority. This prioritized list of insights can then be used to inform your product roadmap and shape your overall product strategy.
It’s important to continuously track and monitor drop-offs and exit rates in the user journey, as these metrics can change over time as your product evolves and user needs and behavior shift. By regularly reviewing this data, you can identify opportunities for improvement and ensure that your product is meeting the needs of your users at every step.
4 . Aligning Product Strategy with User Journeys
One of the most powerful aspects of user journey mapping is its ability to align your product strategy with the needs and behavior of your users. By comprehensively understanding the user experience, you can ensure that your product delivers a seamless and intuitive journey that satisfies user needs while also aligning with your business objectives.
User journey mapping becomes a vital tool for Product Managers and Product Designers in defining a target vision and visualizing the user stories that compose an Epic. Each step of the user journey allows you to identify dependencies between feature teams/squad, anticipate potential risks, and address questions that need to be solved. It becomes a discovery process and a means to create a well-defined backlog that informs your product roadmap.
To effectively align your product strategy with user journeys, consider the following:
- Involve your feature team/squad in the user journey mapping process. By actively engaging your team members in such exercise, everyone gains a deep awareness of user needs and behavior. This collaborative effort fosters a shared understanding and ensures that your entire team works together to create a product that truly meets those needs. Conducting a workshop is an effective way to facilitate this collaboration and knowledge sharing.
- Regularly review and update your user journey map. User needs and behaviors evolve over time, so it’s crucial to regularly review and update your user journey map. This ongoing process helps you stay in tune with your users and ensures that your product continues to meet their evolving needs, delivering the best possible experience.
- Leverage user journey mapping to inform your product roadmap. By gaining a holistic understanding of the user experience, you can use the insights from the user journey map to prioritize features and improvements that have the greatest impact on the overall journey. This data-driven approach helps you make informed decisions and allocate resources effectively to deliver an exceptional user experience.
Incorporating user journey mapping into your product strategy empowers you to bridge the gap between user needs and business goals. It not only helps you understand the current user experience but also enables you to shape the future of your product based on a deep understanding of user behaviors, pain points, and aspirations. By leveraging user journey mapping as a strategic tool, you can create products that truly resonate with your users and drive long-term success.
Along the year at OpenClassrooms, some Product Designers were able to present their different user journeys. Check out this presentation preview, where Mathieu Jeune showcased in front of the whole company, the user journey to become an apprentice at OpenClassrooms! 👇
5 . Testing and Iterating on the User Journey
Once you have implemented changes to the user journey, it’s important to test and iterate on your design to ensure that it meets the needs and goals of your users. There are several methods you can use to test user journeys, including usability testing, focus groups, interviews and online surveys. It’s important to choose the method that best fits your needs and resources.
At OpenClassrooms, we are committed to staying closely connected with our users and gather valuable insights through weekly user interviews. When needed, you can also use exciting asynchronous research tools like maze.co to further understand and meet the needs of your community.
During user testing, you can observe users as they interact with your product and gather feedback on their experience.
As you test and iterate on your user journey maps, it’s important to keep track of the data you collect and the insights you gain. This can help you identify areas of the journey that are working well and areas that need further improvement.
Continuous product discovery is key to ensure that your product is meeting the needs of your users and delivering the best possible experience. By regularly reviewing and updating your user journey, you can stay ahead of changing user needs and behavior and continue to improve your product over time.
To wrap up
As a Product Designer or Product Manager, you have the opportunity to improve your product, set your company apart in the market, and create a truly exceptional user experience through user journey mapping.
Focus on what matters. By adopting this design and data driven approach, you will quickly demonstrate the impact on your product and company OKRs.
User journeys allows you to understand the needs and behavior of your users, identify opportunities for improvement, and create a seamless and intuitive user experience. It also allow your feature team/squad to have an impact on the product roadmap and OKRs, supports collaboration across squads, brings visibility and clarity to all members of the company.
By testing and iterating your user journey, you can ensure that your product continues to meet your users’ needs, delivers the best possible experience and meets your company’s objectives. By gathering insights from your users and continually improving your product, you can drive innovation and make a real impact on your market field.
In addition, user journey is a great tool to onboard team members and newcomers.
Embrace user journey mapping and take your product and company to the next level!
That’s it! You want to know more about conducting design and user research? Take this OpenClassrooms free-access course!
References:
- Customer Journey Mapping 101 — NNGroup
- Journey Mapping vs. Story Mapping — NNGroup
- User Journeys vs. User Flows — NNGroup
- What Is Journey Management? — NNGroup
- Understanding User Pathways in Analytics — NNGroup
- A Beginners Guide to Journey Mapping— UX Planet
