Journey Map - The airport experience
This is Doing, Journey Map Essentials course
Tasks: User Research & Customer Journey Mapping
Timeline: September 2021
Tools: Miro, Smaply, InDesign
Introduction
I am a big fan of journey maps! I like to use my empathy to get into people’s heads and figure out what customers want and how they feel. To improve my journey mapping skills and knowledge 🧠, I participated in the Journey Map Essentials Course by This Is Doing.
Pre-work
Getting up to speed
In advance of the course, I had access to the pre-work material (videos and links) to bring me up to speed. After the pre-recorded material, I had to do a Service Safari from the airport experience of Gerry, the host. In a 7 minute video, he showed his airport experience. It was my task to document everything I noticed on a service safari canvas.
During the course, Gerry walked us through the design research and the visualization process of creating a proper journey map.
2. Research
Service Safari
The first step of the research process was to complete the Service Safari of the airport experience of Gerry. This exercise forced me to look across all channels and deep-dive into the experience of the customer.
The canvasses below are created with Miro.
Empathy Map
To gain a deeper insight into the customer, I created an Empathy Map. This map can represent a group of users and can therefore be transformed into a persona.
Pre to Post
Service
This step can be used as an extra step before you create your journey map. With this step, I divided the experience into 3 phases; pre-service, service, and post-service. Now, it’s already in the right order to make a visual presentation of the journey map.
3. Visualization
High-level
Journey Map
In Miro, I created a high-level (macro) Journey Map and a zoom-level (micro) journey map, lane by lane. After the course, I made these maps with the Smaply software. Because I couldn't design my map the way I wanted it, I visualized it in InDesign (they call me stubborn). In an ideal world, I would hand it over to a visual designer, but this is what I managed to make out of it!
Zoom-level
Journey Map
After I documented the whole airport experience of Gerry, I zoomed in on one particular part of the journey. I chose to do this for the check-in experience. There were several things going wrong there, so there was room for improvement. I like to get things better, smoother, and clearer, so why don’t start with the biggest mess?
Opportunities
To conclude this, I summarized the potential opportunities
Fix the online check-in possibilities. This should be a priority for a good customer experience.
Make clear during the booking process you need a Visa.
Give staff proper training about the online check-in process and the use of the app.
Create the possibility to print your own boarding pass at the airport.
Reflect
What have I learned from this project?
Before I started this course, I already knew about journey maps, but haven’t really created one myself. During this course, I got the tools and knowledge to create one from scratch. Where do you need to think of? What is the correct level of zoom? Now I know all about touch-points and lanes, I feel confident to create my own journey maps!
Tip 💡📚: after the course, I completed my journey map. As a reference book, I bought the book ‘This is service design doing’. It is a great book about design thinking, service design, UX design, CX design, and much more. Every step, output, or process you may have to deal with during the (UX) design process is described in a very clear way!