Once you’ve completed your interviews and you’ve got your data, it’s time to make sense of it all.
To do this, we’re going to want to create a key asset: a User Journey Map.
Journey maps take many forms and are used in a lot of different ways, but for our purposes, we’re trying to document, in as much granular detail as we can manage, each and every step a user takes to accomplish a specific task in our product along with any ephemeral data like thoughts and feelings a user experiences during their respective journeys.
To create your user journey map, you can use something as simple as pen and paper or an infinite canvas tool like Miro or Whimsical.
Here’s an example of a user journey map:
<aside> 🔗 Journey Map Miro Template
Password: “thegrowthformula”
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In this image you can see that the entire journey is detailed with tons of supporting information like goals, emotions, and thoughts. This is why it’s so critical to excavate the story during your interviews and to ask your participants to think aloud during the interview so you can capture their emotions and feelings as well as stated goals and actions.
When you’ve completed your first round of interviews and have created journey maps for each of your users, it’s time to start comparing notes.
What we’re trying to accomplish here is to gain a better understanding of the common actions, thoughts, and emotions experienced by users in both our high affinity group and low affinity group.
With this information, we can begin to formulate hypotheses about how to improve the experience for the lower affinity groups and drive better adoption, retention, and, with any luck, revenue expansion.
One final note: be sure to capture all of this information in a single source of truth and keep it organized. What I mean is, if you decide to use Miro, then only use Miro and keep your Miro account organized and clean.
This will help new hires, promotions, and even stakeholders access this information easier, understand it faster, and drive better alignment within your teams.