User Experience is a vital aspect to any websites, or software build, so it is very important to include journey mapping into your projects development stage.  Journey maps are diagrams that outline the step-by-step process your users go through when interacting with your website.  These maps are often created after the persona stage as they need to encompass the user profiles that are expected to interact with your website.

Journey Maps can illustrate one of two aspects: Current interaction, demonstrating problematic navigation, or future interaction, demonstrating solutions for navigation.  Both types of journey maps will identify user goals, motivations, main tasks, and overall user characteristics.  By establishing these characteristics, you will not only be able to create a realistic step-by-step user experience but you will also be able to identify and understand the core functionality of your website.  Journey maps are also very valuable in the way that they help you define your projects’s key concepts.  This is due to the fact that journey maps demonstrate the ‘vision’ of the project which allows you to visualize and brainstorm your projects dynamics.  Understanding these basic, but fundamental, ideas will help your project achieve its goals and help keep your team on track.