Journey mapping

Journey Mapping

Part of the discovery-phase skill pack · synthesis group · reads personas.md (run personas first if missing) and themes.md (from insight-synthesis).

Turns a persona's lived experience into a stage-by-stage map that surfaces where pain concentrates and where opportunity moments hide. Each pain point is evidence-anchored; each opportunity moment links back to the opportunity-tree.md so journey work doesn't drift from prioritized outcomes.

Step 1 — Read context + upstream artifacts

Read discovery-context.md, personas.md, themes.md. If personas.md is missing, recommend running personas first — journeys without a named persona collapse to "the average user" and become useless. Don't block: the BA may proceed with [ASSUMED-persona] for a quick draft, but flag low confidence.

If interview-notes/ exists, scan for chronological narrative — interviews where users walk through "and then I did…" are gold for journey reconstruction. If only support-data-analysis.md is available, the journey will be partial (post-purchase / support phase only).

Step 2 — Set scope

Decide three things up-front; cram all three into one journey and the map becomes unreadable:

1. Which persona — pick exactly one. If you need journeys for two personas, run this skill twice.
2. Which journey — onboarding, repeat-purchase, support-resolution, evaluation, churn-recovery, etc. Name it precisely.
3. Current-state or future-state — current-state maps pain; future-state maps the proposed redesign. Default to current-state unless a feature-scoping decision depends on the future view.

State all three at the top of the artifact. They're constraints — if mid-skill you find yourself blending personas, stop and re-scope.

Step 3 — Stages (3-7)

High-level phases the persona moves through. Examples by journey type:

Journey	Typical stages
Onboarding	Discover → Sign up → First use → Habit formation
Repeat-purchase (B2C)	Trigger → Browse → Decide → Purchase → Receive → Use → Repurchase
Support resolution	Hit problem → Self-serve attempt → Contact support → Wait → Resolve
Enterprise evaluation	Awareness → Shortlist → Pilot → Internal sell → Procurement → Rollout

3 stages = too coarse, 7+ = decompose further or split into two journeys.

Step 4 — For each stage, fill the row

Column	What goes here	Evidence required?
Stage	Phase name	—
Actions	What the persona literally does (verbs)	Light
Touchpoints	Channels / tools / people involved	Light
Thinking / Goal	What they're trying to accomplish in this stage	Strong
Pain points	What's broken — friction, confusion, fail	Required — cite [I-N], [support-id], [SME-name]
Emotion (1-5)	1=frustrated, 3=neutral, 5=delighted	Strong
Opportunity moments	Where the product could intervene	Link to opportunity-tree.md

If a row has no pain points but the persona is unhappy, the synthesis is wrong — either the emotion is overstated or you missed a pain. Loop back to evidence.

Step 5 — Draw the emotion line

A simple sparkline across stages: 2 → 1 → 1 → 3 → 4. The dips identify where the product's intervention has the highest leverage. If the line is flat, either the journey is uniformly OK (rare — and your scope is probably wrong) or you didn't probe deep enough.

Step 6 — Identify intervention moments (top 3)

From the rows, pick the top 3 opportunity moments — places where a redesign would shift the emotion line most. Each must:

• Be tied to a specific stage and pain point
• Reference an opportunity in opportunity-tree.md (or flag as a new opportunity to add)
• Note what evidence makes this stage high-leverage (e.g., "8 of 12 interviews mentioned drop-off here")

These three moments become inputs to feature-scoping and mvp-definition.

Step 7 — Pressure test (4 checks)

Test	Question	Fix
Persona-fit	Does each stage make sense for the named persona? Or did you slide into "average user"?	Re-anchor on the persona's role/context
Evidence per pain	Every pain point has a citation?	Drop unsupported pains or escalate to "open question"
Emotion grounded	Is the emotion score derived from a quote, not a guess?	Replace guesses with quotes or [ASSUMED]
Opportunity link	Top-3 moments link to opportunity-tree.md?	Add to opportunity tree or revise — journeys that don't feed downstream are decoration

Step 8 — Write artifact

Output: ./discovery/journey-map.md — see ./template.md.

Append to _log.md: [journey-mapping | YYYY-MM-DD] persona: <label>; journey_type: <onboarding|...>; state: <current|future>; stages: <N>; top_pain_count: <K>.

Anti-patterns

• Feature-led journey. "User clicks button → user sees screen" is a UX flow, not a journey. Lead from the persona's intent, not the product's UI.
• Generic personas, generic journey. Without a sharp persona, every stage becomes vague.
• Missing emotion line. Pure-cognitive journeys hide where redesign actually matters.
• Future-state cosplay. Future-state maps without an evidence-backed current-state are wishful thinking.
• One mega-journey covering 12 stages. Split. Always split.
• Journey that doesn't feed opportunity-tree.md. Journey work that doesn't change downstream decisions is decoration.