# Journey Mapping > Build a customer journey map or experience map and storyboard the key moments: persona and scenario, the stages a user moves through, and per stage their actions, thoughts, emotions, touchpoints, and pain points, ending in prioritized opportunities. Use when someone asks for a journey map, experience map, user journey, service blueprint, 'map the flow', 'where do users drop off', 'storyboard this feature', wants to visualize an end-to-end experience, or needs to find the highest-pain moments in a flow before designing. Pairs with user research and dogfooding to ground the map in evidence. - Skill: `exiao/journey-mapping` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add exiao/journey-mapping` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/exiao/journey-mapping/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Research & Search - Author: exiao (https://skillmd.com/u/exiao) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/exiao/journey-mapping --- # journey-mapping A journey map is a shared picture of how a person experiences a process over time, from their point of view, not the org's. Its job is not to be pretty. Its job is to (1) create a shared truth a team can point at, and (2) surface the specific moments where the experience breaks so you know where to invest. A map that ends without prioritized opportunities is decoration. ## Before you map: scope it A journey map is only meaningful with a fixed viewpoint. Nail these first, or the map will be a vague average of nobody: - **Persona / actor.** ONE specific person type, with goals and context. "Users" is not a persona. If you have research personas, use one; if not, name a concrete archetype and its motivation. - **Scenario + goal.** The specific journey and what the person is trying to accomplish ("first-time user setting up the product and reaching first value"). One scenario per map. Onboarding and renewal are different maps. - **Scope boundaries.** Where does the journey start and end? Widen too far and it's shallow; narrow too far and you miss the handoffs where experiences usually break. - **Grounding.** Is this current-state (what happens today, from evidence) or future-state (the experience you intend to design)? Say which. Current-state maps must be built from real signal (interviews, support tickets, session recordings, analytics, a dogfood pass), not assumptions. If you're assuming, label the assumption rows explicitly so they can be validated. ## The anatomy (rows of the map) Lay stages across the top as columns. For each stage, fill these rows: 1. **Stage / phase** — the chunk of the journey (e.g. Discover → Onboard → First use → Habit → Renew). Name them in the user's language, not the funnel's. 2. **Actions** — what the person actually does in this stage, concrete steps. 3. **Thoughts / questions** — what's going through their head; the questions they need answered to continue. Verbatim quotes if you have them. 4. **Emotions** — the emotional curve across the journey (rising/falling, a plotted line). This is what makes a map more than a flowchart; the low points are where you focus. 5. **Touchpoints / channels** — where the interaction happens (app screen, email, support, physical, third party). 6. **Pain points** — friction, confusion, drop-off, unmet need, moments of doubt. Be specific and locate each at a stage. 7. **Opportunities** — for each pain point, what could fix or improve it. This feeds prioritization. For a **service blueprint** (when the backstage matters), add rows below the line of visibility: frontstage staff/system actions, backstage processes, and supporting systems. Use a blueprint instead of a plain journey map when the fix likely lives in operations or systems the user never sees. ## The emotional curve is the point Plot emotion as a line across the stages. The deepest troughs are your priorities — those are the moments a user might quit, churn, or badmouth the product. The peaks are moments to protect and amplify (and candidates for asking for a review or referral). A journey map with a flat emotional row was filled in lazily; real experiences have highs and lows. Pay special attention to: - **The first low point** after commitment (people forgive early friction less once they've already invested). - **Transitions and handoffs** between stages, channels, or teams. Experiences break at the seams far more than in the middle of a stage. - **Moments of truth** — the few interactions that disproportionately shape the overall impression. ## Storyboarding the key moment Once the map exposes the critical moments, storyboard them. A storyboard is a small sequence of frames (sketches or described panels) showing a specific user moving through a specific moment, step by step, in context. It turns an abstract stage into a concrete scene a team can react to and a designer can build against. For each key moment, produce a short panel sequence: ``` Panel 1: — the setup and trigger Panel 2: Panel 3: Panel 4: — resolution or friction ``` Keep it to 3-6 panels per moment. Show the pain-point version and, if proposing a fix, the improved version beside it so the delta is visible. Storyboards are most useful for the trough moments the map just exposed — don't storyboard the whole journey, storyboard the moments that decide it. ## Deliverable Prefer a visual artifact over a wall of text. Options, in order of preference: - An SVG or HTML map: stages as columns, the rows above, and the emotion curve drawn as a line across the top. Hand-author real vector text so it stays legible. - If a diagramming tool is available (Excalidraw, a design tool, d3), use it. - A structured table only as a fallback for text-only channels. Always end with a short **prioritized opportunities** list: the top pain points ranked by severity × frequency (or reach × impact), each tied to its stage and a proposed direction. That ranked list is the reason the map exists — it tells the team where to spend next. ## How to run this skill 1. **Scope** (persona, scenario+goal, boundaries, current vs future, grounding source). Ask for what you're missing. 2. **Gather evidence** if current-state: pull from interviews, tickets, analytics, recordings, or run a dogfood pass. Label any assumption rows. 3. **Lay out the stages** in the user's language. 4. **Fill the rows** stage by stage: actions, thoughts, emotions, touchpoints, pain points. 5. **Draw the emotion curve** and mark the troughs, transitions, and moments of truth. 6. **Storyboard** the two or three decisive moments (pain version, and fix version if proposing one). 7. **Rank opportunities** and hand off the prioritized list. ## Pitfalls - **Inside-out mapping.** Writing the map from the company's process instead of the person's experience. If your stages are your internal funnel names, you're mapping your org, not their journey. - **The average user.** A map for "everyone" describes no one. Fix the persona. - **No evidence.** A confidently-drawn current-state map built entirely from assumption is worse than no map, because it launders guesses into shared "truth." Label assumptions; validate the high-stakes ones. - **Stopping at the picture.** The map is the middle of the work, not the end. No prioritized opportunities means no decision came out of it. - **Mapping everything.** Too broad a scope yields a shallow map. One persona, one scenario, real depth.