Every time a UX face a new project, he faces a new travel. In a normal trip, there are expectations, insecurity, illusion, even fear. But you always come back wiser, a little bit older and happy.
This is how a user journey looks like.
As you may know at this point, user journey is the travel a person makes and the emotions he gets when interacts with a third part. No matter if this is a digital interface, a company, a person or whatever.
Designing user journeys it’s not an easy thing, and there are several techniques and tools to simplify the process: empathy maps, Personas, customer journey maps... and so on.
However, all of these techniques are useless unless we give consistency and value in every step of our journey. There are some general tips that every UX should keep in mind :
Research, research again and understand your user’s goals.
Designing a user journey without understanding your user’s needs is like travel without knowing where you are going. You have the 50% of the chances to be right with your suitcase, and who want to be on the Himalayas in his swimsuit?
If you don’t want frights in your journey, start by researching, studying and understanding your user’s goals.
Detect problems in the journey and be nice solving them.
Every journey has its problems. Some of them forget the ID at home, others lose their money… or even worse, run out of battery taking the best selfie they’ve ever made.
You can face many problems in your user journey: manage errors, communicate the user that he can’t complete an operation, waiting… and more. But it’s crucial how you solve them, being consistent with your screen navigation, data and giving an exit for every problem with kindness and caring about your user’s emotions.
A problem could be a future success.
Be aware of errors and show them properly.
Typically, errors mean that the user is doing something wrong or they can’t continue because of [insert here some reason].
As UX and human being, I’m sure that you don’t enjoy saying users that they can’t do something or they’re wrong, but sometimes it’s necessary.
So, keep in mind:
Showing an error is your interface saying ‘Pardon’.
Share your work.
Some people like to travel alone, and it’s an incredible experience. But it’s better having someone beside you to listen how bad you sing.
One of the most common mistakes is not to share your work as soon as you can. It will make you a better professional, to fail quickly, to learn from others and to realize about mistakes that probably you’ve not seen yet.
You’re UX, you’re social by nature.
After every project and journey design, you’ll have learned from your mistakes, making your next journey more incredible, like travels. 🙂
Enjoy it!