What is it?

Journey Mapping is a visual technique for plotting someone's experience over time, step by step, from start to finish. A group builds a large timeline showing the stages a person moves through, what they do at each stage, what they think and feel, and where things work or fall apart. The map usually sits on a long strip of paper along a wall, with sticky notes stacked in rows underneath each stage. The result is a shared picture of an experience nobody sees in full on their own. Different people see different parts, and the map brings those parts together. Once the map exists, the group can spot patterns, pain points and opportunities that were invisible when each person only had their own slice of the story.

Also Known As

• Customer Journey Map
• Experience Map
• User Journey Map
• Service Journey Map

When to Use It

• Redesigning a customer, patient, employee or user experience
• Making sense of a complex process that crosses teams or departments
• Finding pain points and drop-off moments in an existing service
• Aligning a group around what someone actually experiences, not what the org chart suggests
• Starting a service design or improvement project
• Onboarding new team members to a complex customer or user journey
• Building empathy for a group the team does not interact with directly
• Identifying moments of truth where the experience can be won or lost

When NOT to Use It

• When the group has no data or direct knowledge of the experience. A map built on pure guesswork looks good and misleads people.
• When you need a quick decision. Mapping takes time and the output is a starting point, not an answer.
• When stakeholders are not willing to hear difficult feedback. The map will surface uncomfortable truths and a defensive room will argue each one away.
• When there is no intention to act. A map with no follow-up creates cynicism.
• When the "journey" is actually a single interaction. Use a simpler tool like a process map or an empathy map instead.
• When the group is too small or too homogenous to represent different perspectives on the experience.

Journey Mapping in its modern form was introduced by OxfordSM (then Oxford Corporate Consultants) in 1998 during their work with Eurostar to shape its brand and service proposition. The broader idea of mapping a service experience was seeded earlier by Chip Bell and Ron Zemke in the late 1980s, and the technique has since become a staple of service design, user experience and customer experience practice.

What You Need

Group size: 4 to 20 people works well. Larger groups can work if you split into sub-teams mapping different personas or journey segments.

Time required:

• Minimum 90 minutes for a simple journey with a well-prepared group
• Typical sessions run 2.5 to 4 hours
• A deep map with field research, multiple personas and prioritised actions can run as a full day or a series of sessions.

Space:

• A wall or long table at least 3 metres long for the map
• Room for people to stand and move along the map
• Side tables for materials
• Blank wall space nearby for parking ideas and questions

Materials:

• A long strip of brown paper or flip chart sheets taped together, at least 3 metres long and 1 metre tall
• Sticky notes in at least five different colours
• Marker pens for each participant
• Thick black markers for headlines
• Masking tape
• Printed persona summary (if using)
• Printed journey stages (if defined in advance)
• Coloured dots for prioritisation in the later stages
• Camera or phone to photograph the final map

The Process

Setup

1. Decide whose journey you are mapping before the session. Narrow to one persona or one customer segment. Broad journeys ("all our customers") become useless.
2. Gather any data you have: interview notes, support tickets, analytics, survey results. Print the highlights and bring them to the room.
3. Draw the base structure on the paper before participants arrive. Across the top, leave space for journey stages. Down the side, label horizontal rows for: Actions, Thoughts, Feelings, Pain Points, Opportunities.
4. Agree the start and end points of the journey. "From when the customer first hears about us" to "thirty days after purchase" is a useful frame.
5. Choose one colour of sticky note for each row so the map is readable at a glance.
6. Brief any co-facilitators on their role and which sections they will support.

Step 1: Set the scene

Time: 10 minutes

Purpose: Ground the group in whose journey they are mapping and why it matters.

1. Welcome the group and share the goal of the session in one sentence. For example: "By the end of today we will have a shared map of what a new customer experiences in their first month, and three priority areas to improve."
2. Introduce the persona. Read out a short profile. If you have real quotes from customers, read two or three of them.
3. Explain the structure of the map. Walk along it and point to each row. Tell the group what each row is for.
4. Set one ground rule: "We are mapping what actually happens, not what we wish happened." Say this twice.

Watch for: A group that wants to jump straight to solutions. Hold them on the experience.

Step 2: Agree the stages

Time: 15 minutes

Purpose: Define the chunks of the journey so the rest of the map has a backbone.

1. Ask the group: "What are the main stages this person moves through, from the start point to the end?"
2. Capture stages on large sticky notes and stick them along the top of the map. Aim for between five and eight stages.
3. If the group struggles, offer a generic frame as a starter: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Onboarding, Use, Support, Advocacy. Make clear they can change or replace these.
4. Check the stages read as a sensible story from left to right.
5. Park debates about whether a stage belongs here or there. The stages can move later.

Watch for: Stages that describe what the organisation does rather than what the person experiences. "Email nurture sequence" is an internal stage. "Getting useful information" is a customer stage. Reframe these.

Step 3: Fill in the actions

Time: 20 minutes

Purpose: Capture what the person actually does at each stage.

1. Hand out sticky notes in the "Actions" colour. Give each person a stack.
2. Ask: "At each stage, what is this person doing? Write one action per sticky note."
3. Give five minutes of silent writing.
4. Invite people to place their sticky notes under the right stage. No discussion yet.
5. Once most are up, walk along the map and group duplicates.
6. Read out what is on the map stage by stage. Ask: "Is anything missing?"

Watch for:

• Assumptions presented as fact. Challenge gently: "Is that what we know, or what we think happens?"
• Internal process steps creeping in. Park these for a different map.

Step 4: Surface thoughts and feelings

Time: 25 minutes

Purpose: Move past what the person does to what the experience is like for them.

1. Switch to the "Thoughts" sticky colour. Ask: "At each stage, what is this person thinking? What questions are in their head? What are they hoping for or worried about?"
2. Give five minutes of silent writing, then place on the map.
3. Switch to the "Feelings" colour. Ask: "How does this person feel at each stage? One feeling per sticky note."
4. Encourage specific words. "Frustrated" is more useful than "not happy".
5. Once the feelings row is up, draw a simple emotion line along the map: up for positive, down for negative. This line often reveals the shape of the experience more than any other part of the map.
6. Stand back and look at the whole map together for two minutes in silence.

Watch for: A flat emotion line. It usually means the group is playing safe. Ask: "Where does this person feel most alive? Most angry? Most confused?"

Step 5: Identify pain points

Time: 20 minutes

Purpose: Pinpoint the moments where the experience breaks down.

1. Switch to the "Pain Points" colour, often red.
2. Ask: "Looking at the map, where is this person struggling? Where is the experience not working?"
3. Have people place pain points directly under the relevant stage.
4. When the sticky notes are up, stand back. Ask: "Which pain points feel biggest? Mark those with a dot."
5. Give each person three dots. Let them place all three on one pain point or spread them out.
6. Count the dots. The top three become the focus for the next step.

Watch for: Blame language. "Finance are too slow" is a problem to solve, not a pain point in the customer's experience. Reframe as: "The customer waits three weeks without hearing anything."

Step 6: Generate opportunities

Time: 25 minutes

Purpose: Move from what is broken to what could be different.

1. Gather the group around the top three pain points.
2. For each one in turn, ask: "If we could wave a wand and change this, what would be different for the person?"
3. Write opportunities on the "Opportunities" colour sticky notes. Capture everything, even the unrealistic ones at this stage.
4. Once you have a set of opportunities for each pain point, ask: "Which of these would have the biggest impact if we did it well?"
5. Star the three most promising opportunities.
6. For each starred opportunity, identify one person or team who will take it forward and a date for the next check-in.

Watch for: Solutions that are too small (a tweak to an email) or too vague (improve communication). Push for specific, concrete changes.

Closing

Time: 10 minutes

1. Walk the group along the finished map one last time, narrating the story of the person.
2. Photograph the map. Take close-ups of each stage as well as a wide shot.
3. Ask each person to share one thing that surprised them and one thing they will take away.
4. Confirm who is doing what by when.
5. Agree where the map will live and who owns it. A map in a cupboard dies.

Facilitator Guidance

What Makes This Work

Journey Mapping works because it forces a group to build a shared mental model of an experience they each only see in fragments. The physical scale matters. A wall-sized map pulls people out of their seats and away from their laptops, and the sticky notes make every contribution visible and equal. The technique trades precision for clarity: a journey map is never the full picture, but a good one is true enough to act on. The discipline of separating what a person does, thinks and feels stops the group from collapsing all three into vague generalisations. And the emotional line, drawn at the end, often gives the map its power. It shows the shape of the experience in a way a spreadsheet never will.

Common Pitfalls

• Mapping what you wish happened: Groups drift towards the ideal experience rather than the real one. Say "what actually happens" twice at the start and remind people whenever you see the map get rosy.
• No real voice of the customer: A map built on opinions, even expert ones, will be wrong in places nobody notices. Bring interview quotes, support tickets, survey data, anything from outside the room. Read a quote aloud at each stage.
• Too many personas at once: Trying to map three customer types on one map creates a Frankenstein journey nobody recognises. One persona per map.
• Solution mode too early: The group wants to fix things before they have mapped them. Park solutions in an "ideas" corner of the room and come back to them at the opportunities step.
• Skipping feelings: Facilitators new to the technique rush through the emotional row because it feels soft. It is the most important row. Slow down and spend real time there.
• Leaving the map behind: The session ends, the map goes in a tube, nobody looks at it again. Photograph it, digitise it if useful, and schedule the first follow-up before people leave the room.

Adaptations

• Virtual delivery: Use a Miro or Mural board with a template set up before the session. Keep the structure the same, use colour blocks instead of coloured stickies. Break into smaller rooms for each stage, then come back together.
• Small groups (under 6): Do the whole map together rather than splitting into sub-teams. Make sure the quieter voices get heard at each stage with round-robin input.
• Large groups (over 20): Split into sub-teams, each mapping a different persona or a different stretch of the journey. Bring the maps together in a gallery walk at the end.
• Short session (60 to 90 minutes): Pre-populate the stages and the actions row from existing research. Use the session for thoughts, feelings, pain points and opportunities only.
• Future-state mapping: Once a current-state map exists, build a second map showing the experience you want to deliver. Compare the two. The gap between them is the work.
• Employee journeys: The same structure works for employee experience, onboarding, offboarding, internal change initiatives.
• Multi-channel journeys: Add a row below stages showing which channel the person is using (app, email, phone, in person). The channel switches often align with pain points.

Real-World Applications

Hospital redesign: A regional hospital mapped the journey of a first-time surgical patient across five stages from referral to follow-up. The emotion line plunged at the pre-admission phase, where patients waited without information. The hospital added a dedicated pre-admission nurse call two days before surgery. Cancellation rates dropped and satisfaction scores rose within three months.

SaaS onboarding: A software company ran journey mapping with its product, customer success and sales teams. The map revealed that three different teams sent three welcome emails in the first week, each assuming the others had not. They consolidated into one sequence owned by one team. First-month churn fell measurably the following quarter.

Charity supporter experience: A fundraising team mapped the journey of a monthly donor over the first year. The feelings row showed a dip around month four, after the initial thank-you sequence ended. The team added a "what your giving did" story at month five. Lapsed rates improved.

Council service: A local authority mapped the experience of residents applying for a blue badge. The pain points clustered around the paper form and the unclear timeline. The team used the map to build a digital application with clear status updates at each stage. Complaints to the service fell sharply within six months.

Employee onboarding: A mid-sized firm mapped the first 90 days of a new hire. The map surfaced a dead period between week two and week four where managers assumed HR was looking after the new starter and HR assumed managers had it covered. The firm added a week-three check-in owned by the line manager and the drop in engagement at week three disappeared.