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Laying out the journey

What it is

Laying out a journey map means agreeing the scope, listing the steps a real person took, marking the touchpoint at each step, and recording the emotion alongside it. The layout is a grid: stages across the top, the layers of the experience down the side.

Why it matters

A map built from guesses is a diagram of the team’s assumptions, and it will be trusted because it looks researched. Building it from session notes takes longer and settles arguments the same afternoon: the steps are quoted, the emotion row shows where the quotes came from, and the gaps in the research are visible as empty cells rather than filled with invention.

Core ideas

Fix the scope and the persona before drawing

One person, one goal, one start and one end. “A first-time buyer from first thought to first delivery” is mappable; “the customer experience” is not. Write the start and end events at the two ends of the sheet and refuse to draw outside them.

Persona: first-time buyer, no saved payment method
Start:    realises they need the item
End:      item received and used once
Excluded: returns, support contact, repeat purchase

Use the steps people actually took

Take them from session notes rather than from the process diagram. Include the waiting and the dead ends; those are the steps where the experience is decided and they are the ones an internal process diagram omits.

Steps: decides it is needed -> asks two friends -> searches on phone
       -> compares three shops -> adds to basket -> creates account
       -> enters address -> payment fails -> retries next morning
       -> confirmation -> waits 4 days -> delivery attempt missed
       -> collects from depot

One row per layer

Stages on top, then the actions, the touchpoints (app, email, phone, shop), the emotion curve, and the quotes. Keeping the layers separate stops the emotion row from being argued away by a process detail.

Stage       Decide     Compare    Buy        Wait        Receive
Touchpoint  friends    web        app        email       depot
Emotion     excited    unsure     anxious    forgotten   annoyed
Quote                  "which one   "it said
                        is cheapest?"  declined"

Curve the emotion, do not score it

Plot it as a line across the stages. A dip is visible at a glance and survives being shown to people who do not read tables. Mark the dip’s cause in one sentence underneath.

Draw what you have, mark what you do not

Leave the empty cells empty and list them as research gaps. A map with three honest gaps is more useful than one with three invented rows, and the gap list becomes the next study.

Practice

Lay out a one-page journey

From five sessions on one task, draw stages across the top and the four layers below. Include the waiting steps and plot the emotion curve.

Done when: every touchpoint cell names a channel, and every emotion cell is supported by a quote or an observation on the same page.

Publish the gap list

Write the three moments where your evidence was thin next to the map, and name the session you would run to fill each.

Done when: each gap has an owner and a method, and none of the gaps has been filled from memory.

Common mistakes

  • Drawing the internal process — the map shows departments and not a person; fix: take steps from the participant’s account, including the ones your process does not have.
  • Omitting waits and dead ends — the experience looks continuous and the worst moments disappear; fix: add a row for time and draw the pauses.
  • Squashing several personas into one map — the average of two journeys is nobody’s journey; fix: one persona, one map, then compare the maps.
  • Inventing the emotion row — the curve becomes an opinion with a line through it; fix: plot only emotions with a quote or observation behind them.
  • Presenting the map as the deliverable — it is admired and filed; fix: take it into the meeting where priorities are set, with the gaps attached.

Go deeper

Worked examples

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