Journey Maps

First of all, I must say that I am not a design expert but I just wanted to document some of my learning of this little low-tech tool which helps in one's reflective process. At a recent symposium I attended which was surprisingly pretty hands-on, a Senior Teacher who was facilitating my group got us to draw a line graph to map out our individual journeys as a trained educator. The vertical (y) axis captured the highs and lows whereas the horizontal (x) axis marked out the time.

My 'timeline chart'

So, I took some time to reflect on the past few years of teaching and the above sketch is what I got although there would be probably more ups and downs if I was given more time and more space to dive deep into the granularity of the highs and lows of my teaching experience thus far. It may not be super accurate but I think it does help in telling a story, my story.

Sample low-resolution journey map

What if one does a similiar tracking of the highs and lows but instead of over years, we just focus on a day, an average work day? That was what I had to do for a fellow teacher as part of my new job. Interestingly, shadowing and observing a teacher for a day could point to some of the common the pain points and motivations of teachers however it is not really about generalisations. The idea is to see if there are opportunity areas in those extreme points (maxima and minima/turning points).

Another way to think about this journey mapping process is also how our perspectives may differ. Two designers observing the same scene may have differing view as to how the user (the teacher) feels. How high is the high moment is quite subjective. In fact, the teacher/user may feel differently too about how his/her day went. The highest or lowest points might vary and the teacher's lens on his/her own daily experiences matters too. They are insightful. They could inspire tech solutions.

Sample professional journey map of a Starbucks customer 

There are different ways to do up a journey map and many organisations be it in the public or private sector engage designers to look into journey maps to design programmes, spaces and experiences that help keep customers' or users' on the high. I will elaborate more on Touchpoints in the next write-up as they capture moments of interactions be it with artefacts or people (note the little drawings in the line graph for Starbucks above) and those help when noting down details to capture stories on the journey map.