User Journey Map

A user journey map depicts a person’s progress toward a goal, including actions, thoughts, and feelings across relevant touchpoints. Nielsen Norman Group uses user journey map and customer journey map for the same kind of artifact. On an internal platform, the person may be an analyst trying to reach a usable query through a catalog, an access request, approval, and a warehouse. The map follows that person’s experience across the participating teams.

Five elements

Nielsen Norman Group identifies five elements. The actor specifies whose perspective the map follows. The scenario describes the goal, situation, and expectations. Phases organize the sequence. Actions, thoughts, and emotions describe the experience within those phases. Opportunities identify possible improvements, responsible owners, and ways to assess the result. Research statements can illustrate thoughts and feelings, but the map should retain their context and distinguish observation from interpretation.

A single viewpoint gives the map a coherent narrative; it does not establish that every analyst has the same experience. A current-state map should identify its research basis, participant coverage, and uncertainties. A workshop can also produce an assumption-based map, and a future-state map can describe an anticipated experience. Both are useful when their status is explicit. Mark assumptions and planned validation so that a proposed journey is not mistaken for observed behavior.

What it is for, and what it is not

The map gives participating teams a shared account of a user’s task. GOV.UK’s whole-problem guidance explains why this matters: a transaction may be only part of a larger goal, with obstacles between channels or systems. An access form can work correctly while the analyst cannot find its approver or interpret the resulting grant. Use the map to agree which handoffs to investigate and who can act on the findings.

An experience map describes a broader human experience without tying it to one product. A service blueprint adds the organizational activities and dependencies behind a particular journey. It might identify approval routing and scheduled synchronization as separate places to investigate a wait; timestamps and observations are needed to establish their contribution. A user story map organizes product work and releases. value stream mapping examines processing and waiting times through the flow. Four Hours on the Dashboard, Nine Days for the User applies these distinctions to a platform access example.

References

• Sarah Gibbons, Journey Mapping 101, Nielsen Norman Group, 2018, reviewed 15 July 2026.
• GOV.UK Service Manual, Map and understand a user’s whole problem (Open Government Licence v3.0).