User journey mapping:
buying my favorite brand’s coffee
User journey map is a visualization of an individual’s relationships with a product/brand over time and across different channels. It is a step by step journey that a user takes to reach their goal.
User journey mapping is a very important UX tool that helps a designer to understand the essence of the whole experience from the user’s perspective. User journey maps comes in all shapes and forms. It’s represented as a timeline of steps, touchpoints, pain-points and experience between a user and the product.
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back towards the technology, not the other way around.” — Steve Jobs
In this article, I will take you through my journey of buying my favourite brand’s coffee. One evening, I realized I ran out of coffee and tried to explore different options to buy from.
Emotions: 😍 — Happy/Excited, 🙂 — Indifferent, 😞 — Sad/Irritated.
Below is the whole journey map that I took as a user.
The different phases of my journey are as follows:
Discovery
1.Findings
It was a really tiring day and I went to the kitchen to make my evening coffee and realized that the coffee packet was empty.
Touchpoints: Store room, coffee packet.
Experience: I was aware that there was not much coffee left so felt indifferent when I found out the coffee packet was empty.
Emotions: 🙂
2.Exploring
I explored online stores like Instamart for the availability but it wasn’t. Next I searched on amazon but delivery was late. Then I googled timings of nearby shops.
Touchpoints: Phone, Instamart, Amazon, Google Search.
Experience: I was sad that it wasn’t available on online stores and no same day delivery options.
Emotions: 😞
Walking To The Store
I put on my shoes and started walking towards the market. The weather was very hot and humid and the roads were full of potholes.
Touchpoints: Shoes, Elevator, Street, Store.
Experience: It’s a good thing that I got to walk but felt very irritated as the weather was very hot and humidity was high.
Emotions: 😞
Suggestions: The road leading to the store was all broken, It should be reconstructed for a seamless travel experience.
Reaching The Store
I reached the store and greeted the security guard who opened the door for me. Then I found the coffee section where I finally got the coffee brand I was looking for.
Touchpoints: Security Guard, Store, Coffee Section, Coffee.
Experience: I was very happy when I reached the store and found the coffee I was looking for and the staff were very friendly.
Emotions: 😍
Suggestions: The shelves can be marked according to the category they fit in for better recognition.
Payment At The Counter
The checkout line was less crowded. The store accepted UPI payments. I paid using Google Pay.
Touchpoints: Cashier, Google Pay UPI.
Experience: I felt Indifferent as I was already expecting the store to have multiple payment options and the process went smoothly.
Emotions: 🙂
Suggestions: The Cashier should have worn his mask properly.
Walking Back Home
I left the store to go back home. It was already evening peak hours where there is a lot of rush in the market. And the weather was still too hot.
Touchpoints: Grocery Bag, Street, Elevator, Home.
Experience: I was a little Irritated as I walked through the rush hour crowd in the market in that hot weather.
Emotions: 😞
Reaching Home and Making Coffee
Finally I reached home and could fulfill myself a cup of coffee in the evening.
Touchpoints: Coffee, Refrigerator, Mug.
Experience: I was happy because I finally got to have my evening coffee. It was refreshing.
Emotions: 😍
Learnings
In this journey, I realized it takes so many steps to reach a particular goal. All the emotions that we go through which we are not usually conscious about, each Interaction too directly or indirectly affect the choices we make. So it becomes very important to know what your users go through in order to deliver better on their expectations.
Thank you for reading,
Himani Nakrani.
