User Research

Have you ever wondered why a customer can love your product yet still leave with a sour taste? Stéphanie Walter’s User Journey Mapping: Visualize User Research, Brainstorm Opportunities, and Solve Problems begins from this simple but critical insight: designing digital products isn't only about the interface—it’s about the entire experience that stretches across time, channels, and emotions. Walter argues that user journey maps allow teams to visualize this lived reality of users in a structured, shareable way. They help transform isolated pieces of research into a cohesive story of goals, frustrations, emotions, and opportunities.

At its heart, the book claims that a user journey map is far more than a design artifact; it’s a cultural instrument that can align siloed teams, guide prioritization, and foster user empathy. It’s a way to make the invisible—those unseen transitions, gaps, and emotional moments—visible to everyone involved in product creation. As Walter explains, journey mapping turns abstract user data into a visual narrative that drives collaborative problem-solving and informed design decisions.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

In an age of complex digital ecosystems and multi-channel interactions, knowing only how users click through your website or app is no longer enough. Today, a user might see your ad on Instagram, compare products on a laptop, contact customer service through chat, and complete a purchase from their phone. Each of these touchpoints is part of the journey. Yet, as Walter notes, many teams focus narrowly on individual screens while ignoring the end-to-end experience. The result? Good design that fails to deliver good experiences. Journey mapping bridges this gap by connecting data to empathy, process to story, and departments to a common goal.

From Insight to Impact

Throughout the book, Walter takes you step-by-step through building and using these maps effectively. She begins with the fundamentals of what a user journey map actually is and what elements it should contain—goal, phases, touchpoints, pain points, and emotions. She illustrates this with vivid real-world examples like a car dealership app project, where understanding the mechanics’ workflow and pain points led to two impactful design improvements: background synchronization and push notifications. This case captures the book’s premise: when you see the journey end-to-end, design solutions become obvious.

From this foundation, the book unfolds into five parts, each tackling one core challenge of experience design. Chapter 1 introduces user journey maps and their benefits and pitfalls. Chapter 2 expands your toolkit by exploring different types of maps—from current and hypothetical maps to future and even disaster maps. Chapter 3 dives deep into user research, showing how to gather the data you need to make your maps meaningful. Chapter 4 provides a hands-on guide to running workshops that turn scattered insights into collaborative artifacts, and Chapter 5 shows how to clean, share, and apply your map to drive real organizational change.

Beyond Artifacts: Building Culture

What makes Walter’s approach compelling is her insistence that a user journey map isn’t just a deliverable—it’s a process. Workshops, cross-team collaboration, and ongoing updates are as critical as the final visual itself. She warns against creating maps based solely on internal assumptions (what she calls a “map of biases and assumptions”) and reminds readers that the value of mapping lies in continuous engagement with real users. She also challenges teams to see journey mapping as a living document that evolves as the product and its users evolve.

Her philosophy echoes thinkers like Don Norman (The Design of Everyday Things) and the Nielsen Norman Group, who emphasize user-centered design as an iterative, evidence-driven process. Walter extends that tradition by offering a pragmatic blueprint for embedding that mindset across product teams. Through her accessible explanations and illustrated workflows, she turns journey mapping into an approachable, scalable, and ultimately transformative design practice.

“A user journey map is as much about the process of building shared understanding as it is about the final picture,” Walter reminds us. “It’s not about perfection—it’s about perspective.”

By the end of the book, you not only understand how to visualize a user’s story—you understand how to use it strategically. You’ll learn how to lead workshops that spark cross-functional empathy, synthesize data into design opportunities, use maps to guide prioritization, and treat them as living tools for alignment and innovation. Ultimately, the book offers a roadmap for turning research into relationships: between users and designers, between teams, and between assumptions and reality.

If you’ve ever struggled to convince stakeholders why user perspectives matter—or if you’ve wondered how to transform user insights into decisions that stick—this book offers not just methods, but mindset. As Walter proves, mapping isn’t just about tracking user actions. It’s about charting a shared direction for everyone who designs experiences that people love—and that last.

At its simplest, a user journey map is a visual story of how someone interacts with your product or service to achieve a goal. But in practice, it’s a mirror that reflects both the functional and emotional dimensions of experience. Walter defines it as a chronological record of every step a user takes—from discovering your brand to post-purchase support—paired with their thoughts, feelings, tasks, and barriers along the way.

What to Include in a Journey Map

A robust journey map contains both “hard” and “soft” data. The hard data captures objective steps—what users do, what they click, where they encounter friction. The soft data captures empathy—what emotions they feel, what triggers their behavior, and what obstacles lie beyond your interface. Walter lists core components: scope, user goals, phases, actions, pain points, and opportunities. To deepen understanding, you can add data about triggers, knowledge gaps, touchpoints, and the effort required to move forward.

As she illustrates, one dealership project revealed two pain points: delays in syncing photos and communication lags between desk and mechanic. By mapping these phases end-to-end, her team identified features like background sync and push notifications. Without such mapping, those issues might have remained invisible.

The True Utility

Maps are valuable not because they look nice, but because they reveal unseen relationships. They identify gaps between departments (like customer service and tech), inconsistencies across channels, or mismatches between what users know and what they need to know—a “knowledge gap.” By confronting these gaps visually, teams can develop shared insight and targeted fixes.

Walter also warns of pitfalls. Maps built on poor or missing research become dangerous fictions—they represent organizational bias rather than user reality. Her advice: never let mapping become a substitute for talking to users. Instead, treat it as an output of real investigation that must be revisited and validated over time.

User journey maps aren’t static reports—they’re living documents that must evolve with your product and your users.

The power of the journey map lies in its ability to give everyone—from developers to executives—a shared view of what users really experience. It transforms design conversations from “what do you think?” to “what do we know?”

Walter broadens the concept beyond a single map. In Chapter 2, she introduces four main varieties—current, hypothetical, future, and disaster maps—plus hybrid tools like service blueprints and task analyses. Each serves a distinct purpose and stage in a project, helping you visualize different dimensions of a user’s journey.

Current/As-Is Maps

These depict the actual experience users have today. Built from real research, they highlight pain points and inconsistencies across touchpoints. As Walter notes, a current map is perfect once you’ve collected enough user data to separate assumptions from facts. It’s often used to identify immediate opportunities for improvement.

Hypothetical Discovery Maps

When access to users is limited, teams can start with a “map of assumptions”—a hypothesis of how they believe users behave. Though incomplete, these maps help secure budgets and guide initial research direction. Walter cautions against mistaking them for reality; always label them as unverified hypotheses and revisit after user testing.

Future Maps

Future-state maps visualize the ideal experience—the “north star” version of your product after improvements. They work as brainstorming tools, prompting questions like “What would our perfect experience look like in two years?” and “How do we bridge the gap between now and then?” (Similar exercises appear in Designing for Growth by Liedtka and Ogilvie.) Walter advises managing expectations—dream big, but remain practical about constraints like budget and accountability.

Disaster Maps and Beyond

A particularly creative tool is the “disaster journey map,” popularized by UX expert Debbie Levitt. These charts explore what could go wrong and how to prevent disastrous user experiences. Walter presents them as a way to anticipate and mitigate risks—a mirror image of the happy path. Other related maps include task analyses, process maps, and service blueprints, which focus on internal processes, team responsibilities, and the infrastructure behind the scenes.

No matter the type, any map’s value lies in what it reveals about real behavior—not what teams assume or hope users do.

Whether you’re building a new product, auditing an old one, or preventing future UX failures, journey maps adapt to your needs. The most effective teams use multiple maps as a network of perspectives that nourish decisions from discovery to delivery.

Without research, a journey map is just a guess. Chapter 3 anchors the book on this point: meaningful maps start with meaningful data. Walter walks you through a comprehensive research process—from interviewing stakeholders to gathering quantitative and qualitative insights directly from users.

What to Focus On

Research should uncover seven essential categories: user segments, goals, contexts, motivations, tasks, pain points, and touchpoints. Each of these aligns directly to a component of the journey map. For instance, knowing a user’s core motivation (saving time, feeling secure) allows you to plot emotional highs and lows across the journey.

Preparing Your Research

Walter suggests starting with stakeholder interviews to clarify objectives and internal knowledge gaps. Then, assess existing data from marketing analytics, customer support, and training materials. Next, build a research plan—complete with scope, target audience, hypotheses, timeline, and chosen methods.

Methods That Work

She presents a nuanced mix of methods. Quantitative data, like analytics and session replays, highlights what users do and how often. Qualitative research—interviews, observational studies, diary studies—reveals why. Walter stresses “mixed methods”: analytics tell you patterns, but interviews tell you meaning. For example, in one dealership study, observation revealed hidden workflow pain points the numbers alone couldn’t show.

She also warns against common traps: bad survey design (per Erika Hall’s Just Enough Research), biased questions, or relying solely on lab tests that strip away natural context. User research is not a checkbox—it’s a craft built on curiosity, humility, and validation.

“Every map is only as good as the research beneath it,” Walter reminds. “If you skip research, you’re not mapping user journeys—you’re mapping your assumptions.”

The research phase ensures that journey maps reflect genuine human stories, not departmental fantasies. By balancing quantitative and qualitative insights, you ensure each phase of the journey feels authentic, actionable, and deeply empathetic.

Walter believes that the creation process of a journey map is as valuable as its outcome. Chapter 4 turns the spotlight on workshops—the collaborative sessions where raw insights become collective understanding. These sessions pull together designers, developers, marketers, customer service reps, and stakeholders to co-create the user’s story in a tangible form.

Preparation and Participants

Successful workshops start with purpose. Set clear goals: define what part of the journey you’ll explore and ensure participants know the expected outcomes. Invite individuals who represent different parts of the user experience, from product owners to support staff. Keeping groups small fosters richer discussion. Walter cautions that if users participate, ensure balance—never let corporate voices outnumber customer voices, or dynamics can skew the results.

Building the Map Together

Prepare a map template (physical or digital) and use tools like Miro or Mural for remote collaboration. Start by revisiting the user research—sometimes turning findings into a “mini-museum” that participants walk through. Then define journey phases, user actions, emotions, and touchpoints. Work from left to right, adding sticky notes for flexibility. Include a “garage” section for out-of-scope yet valuable ideas.

Types of Workshops

Different contexts call for different approaches. Discovery workshops focus on sketching maps from scratch. Iterative workshops use a pre-drafted map that others refine (“filling the blanks”). Analysis workshops focus on using an existing map to identify opportunities for improvement. Each version builds alignment across teams, helps close knowledge gaps, and transfers ownership of user experience from design teams to the entire organization.

Journey mapping workshops aren’t just for generating deliverables—they’re rituals of shared empathy, transforming silos into collaboration.

By the end of these sessions, you’ll have a raw but revealing draft. Walter insists not to rush visual clean-up yet—iteration and validation matter more. As she puts it, “The journey is as important as the destination.”

Once your sticky notes and stories are in place, Chapter 5 shows how to transform them into polished, visual artifacts that can live and circulate within the organization. The aesthetics matter—not for vanity, but for visibility. A readable, branded, and shared journey map keeps user perspectives alive long after the workshop ends.

Designing the Final Map

Walter’s advice for presentation echoes good UX principles: keep it simple, focused, and legible. Use company branding for ownership and accessibility. Break large maps into smaller segments if necessary. Avoid dense PDFs that suffocate insights—opt instead for highly visual, story-based formats. Tools like UXPressia offer templates for this phase.

Sharing and Maintaining the Map

After visualizing the map, she emphasizes socialization—make the artifact visible! Send it to attendees, present it in meetings, produce summary videos, or even print it as wall art in the office. For remote teams, add the map to Jira epics or Notion pages. Repetition breeds awareness, and awareness breeds adoption. When people can see their role within a map, they start aligning decisions with users in mind.

Using Maps Strategically

Walter shows how maps guide multiple business functions:

• Quality assurance: check if upcoming features align with user needs and journey phases.
• Strategic prioritization: pair maps with a priority matrix to identify quick wins and high-value fixes.
• Culture building: foster empathy by replacing opinion battles with data-driven discussions.

Her example of resolving a notification delay issue shows how such maps lead directly to tangible feature improvements. They also streamline onboarding—explaining complex ecosystems to new team members in minutes.

A journey map is not the end of a project—it’s a compass that continuously points product teams toward the user’s true north.

Finally, she reminds readers to treat maps as living documents. Each product update alters the user journey; maintaining your maps means maintaining your customer understanding. In Walter’s worldview, maps aren’t posters—they’re ongoing commitments.