🗺️ User Journey Maps vs. Service Blueprints (+ Templates) (https://lnkd.in/d8tNmKe2), a fantastic article explaining differences between the two, when to use each, along with a free practical guide to get started. Kindly put together by Morgan Miller and Erika Flowers. As Morgan and Erika write, mapping experiences is a key part of a human-centered business. We need to look at both perspectives — what the person experiences (UX, front stage), and what went on outside of their view to make it happen (Service Design, backstage). With user journey maps, we visualize and document user’s experience. We interview customers to capture their insights, then map patterns. We list steps and actions they go through to meet their goals — sometimes with storyboards, or Jobs-to-Be-Done, or emotional responses. The outcome is an aggregate, real-world experience (front stage) — framed as a narrative. Those user journeys often start way before users start interacting with your product — so we need to include non-digital touch points as well. Customer journey maps are just like user journey maps, just for a different persona: e.g. in B2B, customers might not be end users. Service blueprints are not about documenting the user experience. They apply user experience as starting point, and unpack it to expose how it is *internally* created — with technology, people, operations, processes involved (backstage). Journey maps and service blueprints highlight different sides of the experience story. But they have one thing in common: they help us understand the broken parts and fix them. The outcome, then, is a great UX and great internal processes that shape and enable it. Useful resources: Guide to Journey Maps + Templates, by Stéphanie Walter https://lnkd.in/erheegtf UX vs. Service Design, by Sarah Gibbons https://lnkd.in/d5mw3vVu UX Mapping Methods: A Cheat Sheet, by Sarah Gibbons https://lnkd.in/eSnExG4h Guide To Customer Journey Mapping (+ free template), by Taras Bakusevych https://lnkd.in/e-emkh5A User Journey Maps: Guides and Templates, by yours truly https://lnkd.in/dY5NtqSf ✤ Service Blueprints Service Blueprint Design System (Figma), by Jacopo Sironi https://lnkd.in/d-qrSFRY Service Blueprint Kit, by Julien Fovelle https://lnkd.in/dXmkCPDm Service Blueprint Templates, by Theydo https://lnkd.in/dUsDzYCA A Guide to Service Blueprinting (PDF), by Nicholas Remis https://lnkd.in/ejY82P5M Your Guide To Blueprinting (free PDF + Miro), by Morgan Miller, Erika Flowers https://lnkd.in/efFPAeU9 #ux #design
Love that video about journey maps by Debbie Levitt, MBA https://youtu.be/R5K03_9QQHY?si=zDc-YD9YbHM_VMQt
Related but definitely not interchangeable. I sometimes see UX folks using elaborate technical diagrams and ask them - are you advocating for end users or for a particular technical solution? My aim is primarily, always, to help end users as they frequently get the short straw. While I am frequently drawn to the technical details because I believe in handling things end to end - and being technical I enjoy playing with tech - I am not an advocate for the tech. Nor should I be. In truth, not a single user should ever have to care how the sausage gets made; it should just work the way they expect it, or in some cases, even better than they expected. I think if you keep the users as your primary focus and keep your journeymaps clean of sausage-making details, given the generally excellent communication skills of UX researchers and designers, we could do purely service bluepoints in addition to journeymaps - make it clear it is for a different audience - as long as we keep it in perspective about what our ultimate loyalties are. We serve users. But when a "UX"'practitioner concerns are primarily about the engineering and user concerns take a back seat, they have "gone native" - and ceased to be what they pretend to be.
Thank you for including my work in this awesomely detailed list 🙏
The book “Experience Mapping” by Jim Kalbach is a gem in this space.
Thanks for sharing. Nice to think and plan for better furture, but the most urgent success now must be: stop the genocide in Gaza. People first. _________ Be Human, be responsible, be kind, be respectful. #stopgenocide #savekids
Thanks for sharing such a comprehensive list. It’s really helpful. I have been working on creating service blueprints in my current project and it’s always really amazing to look at how it’s being implemented in other projects too!
Vitaly Friedman Awesome post - a job well done for linking all the thinking and sources into a clear, easy and comprehensive reference guide - thank you 🙏
Great insights on the differences between user journey maps and service blueprints! The provided resources are really helpful for diving deeper into UX and service design. Thank you for sharing, Vitaly Friedman.
If you’d like to dive deeper, Thomas W. has put together a lovely overview of business areas that service design covers: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thomasianwilson_service-design-101-activity-7159203952247406593-4uiq And Howard Chen has published an overview of what service design is not, when to use it, and when not: https://medium.com/@Howard_C/a-beginners-guide-to-what-service-design-is-not-40884a856fd Happy reading, everyone!