In this article, we’ll be focusing on how to create the user story, user’s journey and chart user’s pain points with a user journey map. A user story is a fictional one-sentence story told from a persona’s point of view. It should inspire and inform design decisions by prioritizing goals, uniting the team, inspiring empathic design decisions, and personalizing pitches to stakeholders. To create a user story, you will use both an empathy map and a user persona. A user journey is the series of experiences a user has as they achieve a specific goal. The user journey is created from the user personas and stories that you already have. The purpose of this is to put yourself in the user’s place as they move forward in their user journey. This helps you better understand how your product fits within the user journey.
The user journey begins with a journey map. Journey maps help solve user’s pain points so users can use the product without any issues. The advantage of user journey maps is that they help you see possible pain points that you may not have thought about when you started your design. They also help you find possible improvements to your design that you can add in the future.
User Story
The first step is to gather your user research. You will need to have your empathy map and the user persona that you created handy. Let’s look at the example of Mina is a collge student who work full time as a dog walker who mostly shops online for pleasure as a break from doing school work and to save time by not going into the store. Some pain points they experience are that the online shopping experience has complicated navigation such as buttons that are too small when displayed on mobile and a “busy” design that is distracting.
User story includes a hero, goal, and a conflict. This is the Who, What, and Why:
As a/an busy student and employee, I want to be able to shop online, so that I can quickly reward myself for working hard.
By identifying pain points for the user with the user story, you will be able to create a design that is tailored to user’s needs. The end result is a great user experience.
User Journey Map
Let’s fill up the user journey map with the example above. Actions – Mina’s actions might include choosing an online shopping website and browsing clothing. Task List – Mina might want t apply filters to help browse clothing. Emotion – this is where the user feels at each point in the user journey. For example, Mina feels overwhelmed by the site layout and confusing navigation. Finally, include opportunities for improvment. What are some ways that you can solve an issue or make a task simpler for the user? You will often discover opportunities for improvement that you didn’t even think of when you first started your design. This is all part of the process. For example, adding the filters to narrow down the search.
Keep on filling out the rest of the journey till the end (you decide). Notice how you walk through the user’s shoes with this process. You anticipate Mina’s needs and to design a site that will give them the best possible user experience.
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