Sustainability infused User Journey Maps

Hi and welcome everyone, to today's episode of the Green the Web podcast, a podcast about ecologically and socially sustainable design. I'm your host, Sandy Dähnert, as always, a UX UI designer myself.

And in today's episode we will talk about user journey maps, one of my favorite UX tools that is out there because it's so empathy building and really goes way, way deeper than a lot of the other superficial tools that are out there. And we will talk about what our user journey maps in general, how can we introduce ecological and social sustainability into it? What are advantages? What disadvantages? How can we use them? What's included in user journey maps and sharing? A couple of examples with you, plus a couple of pitfalls that could be there along the way.

One quick notice before we head into today's episode is that I'll be launching my Green UX UI design course end of April this year. There you got it. It's out there. I said it out loud. So it's actually coming. End of April will be open registrations for either the self-study version of it or a live call supported cohort where you'll be two months in a group of like minded people and just going through the process of bringing more ecological sustainability into your ex and your eye. It's about empathizing. It's about envisioning, it's about mapping the journey. It's about architecting the designing, the UI, testing and iterating development, end of measuring and auditing. And it comes also with a bunch of talk about real life. How is it actually in real life just going through all of that? How can we bring more ecological sustainability into our UX and UI design processes? It comes with a ton of guidebooks. It's about lightweight design, but also of how can we bring e-commerce to a greener state as well as raising awareness for ecological aspects. You will find a link with all the information down below in the description and just head to my website and find everything that you could possibly need to know about this course. And if you have any other questions, just send me an email, send me a message somewhere and I'll be happy to answer them all. I'm very open to all questions. There is no wrong or right questions, so just let me know. So Link is in the description.

And now let's head into today's episode. Let's first talk about what are sustainability infused user journey maps. User journey maps in general are incredibly helpful tools for understanding how users think and what processes they go through really from their point of view, not from a company's point of view. That's where we usually are at. User journey maps depict an entire process that a hypothetical user can go through. It's from the information to the booking to the purchase process. So it really goes a long, long, long, long way. And this mapping goes far beyond a single product or service. It also considers everything that lies outside of a single touchpoint such as a website. So you would be looking at someone has a headache and wants to buy medication, so he or she has first awareness that she is sick. Second of all, that she needs medication. Third of all, asking friends and searching around, maybe even on social media, on blog posts, on search engines, eventually coming to your website, probably not even on your home page, but somewhere else, and then going through the whole process of buying something. And also what's on the other side of getting the package, of what emails to receive, how is everything treated or how is the user treated after the actual service has gone through? So really looking at the whole journey a user has because there's so many things that we often forget and just look at a website, an online shop, an application, whatever we are designing. So that's why I really, really love it. And bringing sustainability into it is quite easy actually. Sustainability infused user journey maps. Additionally, look at the ecological and social impact of each step so it adds extra lanes, extra rows to the map. That give us a great reminder to search for problems and opportunity in the fields of sustainability. If you want to have a visual aspect of that, you can also find a link to a Figma as well as a Miro template down below in the description, and you can see that there's rows and columns in each user journey map. We will go through what could be included in that in a second. And the big advantage of such a user journey map is that you don't just look at, okay, my target person is this 50 plus year old person who has been online shopping before, has maybe a chronic disease and some additional characteristics really going through the whole process of it builds so much empathy for the user because we need to really see the journey holistically. We cannot just build individual things that don't fit together. Building service, A building service, B building service C, but in the end they don't fit with each other and users are frustrated and they never come back to your digital product. That would be horrible. Of course, it's also depending on all the emails they get. Are they flooded with emails, for example, and maybe your whole service will have a bad touch to it just because of those emails and the rest of it was fine. Just really thinking step by step through what would a user do after each other? And most importantly, seeing that a user doesn't just come to your website or application alone and goes through the journey in the way you intended it. You know what? That barely happens. Barely. People hop on to a website, read it the way you want it, and then they leave with purchasing something or doing something that you wanted to happen. Most of the times people compare different services, compare products, come back to the website over and over again, sometimes with their smartphones, sometimes with their laptop. Sometimes it works, sometimes stress, sometimes in a really chilled mental space. There are so many possibilities and they go around and around and then in between they ask their family for help, and then they come back to your website and then they're comparing again. And then they go into the process of purchasing something. But then maybe something happens and they got hungry and go for dinner and then they come back again and something has happened. So really thinking about what is the actual process that is happening, not the perfect ideal journey that you really think is happening, but the actual reality. So how to use sustainability infused user journey maps? You can use those journey maps just for yourself in your design process. You can use it within your team. You can use it with clients. If you're a freelancer, you can use it company wide. I've done that in all kinds of scenarios, and I've even met companies and also big corporations that wanted to include user journey maps within every single area and every single product and service that they have. And it's usually not just one user journey map, but actually several user journey maps because of course you have several users and target groups that you want to address as well as they have different kinds of journeys through the products depending on their scenarios and their use cases in specific moments. So that could be either really easy and you just have one user journey map that you work with for yourself or a whole huge process for the full company, full cooperation. Every team that is there and every product and service that is there in your company. Definitely easy to scale. The best moment to set up a user journey map is in the beginning of a product or feature process. You can add and adjust a user journey map over time. It's actually recommended to go back to the user journey map over and over again and empathizing with this user again, bringing new steps in, reflecting on what you've just designed and putting it into the user journey map, and then seeing how other puzzle pieces along the way are shifting, really recommended to actually work with it throughout the process and setting it up right in the beginning of a product or feature process. It helps in every decision process because it's a really visual kind of table like method and you can go in over and over again. It helps in decisions, in development, in marketing and business, obviously in the design of it all. And you can discuss this method in your team and with your colleagues, with other UX designers. You can also see how you can tweak it for you. So it actually fits better. You can design all kinds of things with it. You can go into website design, app design, newsletter funnels, content communications, marketing, strategy services, whatever you can think of, you can put into a user journey map because there's always a journey. It's not just one touch point, but always a journey for your users and you can try it with various users and scenarios, as I said before, and see how different users interact with the same product in a different way. Mind blowing. So many aha moments that I've had with that before. The question is what's included in a sustainability infused user journey map? If you've used user journey maps before like the general ones, then you know that there is a baseline that is a user of the journey and based on your user data, choose a user group and describe it in your journey map. You make your target person as real as possible by analyzing support requests, using web analytics tools, interviewing real users. There's obviously most qualitative way, and you don't create stereotypes that don't. Exist, but actual real users. And you define this user for this journey who is actually going into this journey? It could be let's stick with the medication process. It could be a person that is really independent, loves her life, loves to do all kinds of things in her work, very driven in her work and very outgoing in her free time. It could be also a. Father, single father of three kids. Who is maybe. Has less time, might be more stress, might be older as well. And both users will have a different experience going into the same service. So it's very important to define a user at the beginning of it, to go through this journey with this mindset, with those characteristics, and you will actually try to go through the journey as this person, not as your business marketing designer character, but as this person asking over and over again, what would she or he do? What would she or he think? Who would she or he talk to? And all of those things. Not your opinion, not anyone else's opinion, but this user's this specific user's opinion. That's why it's important that we actually put this user at the baseline of the user journey map. And then you define a scenario and a goal of a journey. It could be the scenario of trying to get medication, and the goal is to have this medication maybe even really fast if it's an urgent thing, if it's a chronic disorder, maybe it's just a regular medication that he or she wants to get if we want to stick to that. Or it could be a scenario of trying to find something for stress release and looking around for meditation, movement, yoga and what so ever courses that are out there with the goal of stress release, the goal could be something very different from what you have in mind of the goal is being buying my yoga course, for example. So really figuring out from a high level what's the scenario and what's the goal of the journey? And then you define the steps of the journey. That's the columns that we have. And at the center of the user journey is a specific product or service, for example, an online booking of a yoga class or the use of a fitness drink or the purchase of an insurance policy. This is the central step that gets accompanied by steps before and after. So we always have before the product. During the product and after the product and those before, during and after columns. They can be separated as well. For example, before the use of a digital product can be separated in the phase of desire and need of discovery, of research, of comparison, of decision making a decision. Those are different steps along the journey of a user that have different aspects of it, different problems, different opportunities, different potentials. During the use of a digital product could be the purchase and the booking. It could be the onboarding, it could be participating in an event, it could be the usage of a product, it could be a support request. Everything that goes along the lines of during the use of the digital product. And then we also look at after the use of the digital product, closing a product, renewing a product, follow up purchases, feedback, sharing this product with friends and family. There's so many things that happen after the use of a digital product, so we should have a look at it as well. And if we have all those columns, we define the rows, the so-called lanes, and you can add as many lanes as you need. And believe me, it's an endless list. There is a couple of standard lanes that are used. Most of the times it's like, what does the user want to achieve? Like the goals, what's the actions, What does the user actually do? What are touchpoints Very, very important to see. Touchpoints could be websites and flyers and YouTube videos and social media posts and everything that is online, offline, family, friends. It could be all kinds of things. And then problems and pain points. What problems can you identify in this step as well as ideas and opportunities? Which ideas can positively enrich the step and solve problems? Those are kind of the standard lanes. You can also integrate user thoughts and feelings and needs and pains and processes, speed positive things that you already encounter, devices that are used, background processes. The list is really endless. You can put in everything that you can just think of. And most important of it all, why we do this podcast episode of Today is Lanes for Environmental and Social Sustainability. The basic lanes for environmental sustainability is problems. How is the environment negatively affected by the step positive impact? How is the environment already positively influenced by the step and ideas? How can the environment be positively influenced by the step or even regenerate it? The same goes for the lanes for social sustainability problems, positive impact and ideas. How? Like what can we identify as the problems that we see, the positive impact that is already there and the ideas that we want to strengthen and build up and integrate? This is the part that seems so simple because it's just a couple of new lanes added to a user journey map, but it gives you this visual space that you see you have to fill out to actually go through this user journey map and you see where you have the biggest problems. You can see where you have the biggest gaps, and you also see where you possibly could have the biggest positive impact. It's visually very attractive and very well to digest and easy to see. Okay, here is something we have to do and it reminds you. It reminds you in every step along the way in the user journey map, that there are those fields that you have to fill out, that you have to think about environmental and social sustainability. It's just there. Even just that is the biggest advantage of it all. Having a reminder in your design processes that you have to think about that and then have to fill it out. With this method, it helps to increase the sustainability of your project and reduce the negative effects. Your product, project, brand or company has. Whatever you have your user journey map for and what you think of going through this user. Map because then obviously you will think of ideas that is not just addressed to the touchpoint, for example, the website or the app that you were thinking of, but all kinds of other sustainability ideas that come up for the whole project, the whole brand, the whole company, the whole corporation. It could be all kinds of ideas that come up in this user journey map and that you can bring along into other teams as far from your design team and bring it into marketing, bring it into business, bring it into everything that you can think of and suggest. Hey, want to have a look with me into this user journey map and what we already detected where we could get better. I love it. It's brilliant. I can just highly recommend using it. So I already shared a couple of examples. If we think about a person who wants to reduce her stress quickly, finding a suitable yoga studio, for example, that fits into her budget or his budget and isn't. When we think of this user, maybe she hasn't never had any touchpoint with yoga before and things like, Oh, please not be too esoteric and hippy. Then we go through the need of, Oh, I'm I feel so stressed, how can I do something good for myself? We go into research of where to start. That's also confusing. I don't even know what to look for, what's better, what is not. And then during the booking of a yoga studio of I don't really understand the process. Oh, maybe something is also great because I can pay with PayPal or something else can happen. And afterwards thinking I love it or I hate it, I want to do even more. I want to do less. I want to cancel it. There is all kinds of feelings and thinking going on in such a user process and journey. What we can detect is in the ecological sustainability is, for example, that there is no description of environmental sustainability on the website and this user would really like to know more about it, that maybe this website uses a lot of CO2 through the usage of it. Maybe it's the printing of material and waste of resources because they print flyers. Maybe it's long and complicated booking lines that mean even more carbon and energy emissions. Maybe it's an ungreen bank for the payment. Maybe it's no ecological course streaming. There's all kinds of problems that we could detect. Possibly already positive could be the support for sustainable projects. Doing something green like saying we have green electricity in our yoga studio, we have yoga retreats in Europe instead of across the pond. We do have a plastic free studio, used equipment, eco cleaning materials. We do have donation options for environmental causes. At the end of the checkout, we mentioned to go outside and take a break in nature after the course, like all kinds of little and big positives that might be already there. And then thinking of all the opportunities to build a lightweight website, to have carbon compensation, to have transparency in environmental sustainability, of having clear click paths, a green hosting, no newsletter, pop ups that might not even work anyways, reduced website tracking, no printed materials or very eco friendly with recycled materials and the ink, eco friendly and all sorts of those things as well as a greener and ethical banking and no unethical third party tools on the application and ecological course training. The same goes for social parts of maybe I feel very excluded from this yoga studio. Maybe it's not accessible. Maybe participants with lower income have no option to get involved. Things like that could be included in all of those steps. Of course, those were mostly website related now, but you can go through the whole journey and find possible problems, positives and ideas. And the biggest pitfall is not thinking in the user's mind, but in yours. I've seen that in so many workshops working with teams that they constantly start with, Well, I think that the user would. Go this way and this way. And I think or I would take this route and I would click here. You constantly have to remind yourself, as well as your colleagues or your team members, to think in the user's voice and mind, not in your own, really trying to go into this user's perspective on everything that is happening. This is the key by far, because in the end, otherwise it will be just a stereotype user who you put thoughts and ideas into it, but it doesn't match reality. And obviously once you have this user journey, map best is to have all kinds of data before filling out this user journey map. But even then, when you filled it out, you constantly come back to it within your design process, but also in learning more about this user. You come back with new information about this user, Oh, I learned this and that about the persona, so I will bring it into my user journey map because it might change the way this user would go through this process. Constantly keeping an eye on this user journey map helps tremendously. It's not a one time method. It's a method that carries you throughout your entire design process and over and over and over again iterating with it. But I highly recommend it. I really do. And I see. So, so many positive changes in many big companies as well who use user journey maps in general, or also sustainability infused user journey maps. And what's the easy part about it is that sustainability just is like 3 or 6 other lanes. It's not a new method. You can just easily swipe it in and here you go. Sustainability is there. You don't have to tell your team members, Hey, we have to do something very new and this is like a four hour method that we have to get into to become more sustainable. No, it's just like Woop. And there you have it. Environmental as well as social sustainability. You can have a look at both. You can have a look at either one of them. I really highly recommend checking it out. As I mentioned, you will find the links to the Figma as well as Miro board in the description. There's two templates that you can just use right away and you have also a description in both of those templates. You will find a link to my blog post about sustainability infused user journey maps as well. It comes with the whole description again, basically. And what I just want to say again is sustainability infused user journey maps are a great tool to build empathy for your users. It's a common method of user journey mapping that we just introduce sustainability into really easy that there is no friction. No team member can say, I don't want to do that. This takes way too long, but just sliding it in there. Huge advantages of truly getting to know your user and what he or she does throughout the whole process, throughout the whole journey of before, during and after your product. Use not just your website and not just your specific checkout maybe, but really the whole process of understanding where is this user coming from and where is this user going to as well. Huge fan as you can see, really huge fan of it all. And again, environmental and social sustainability are just visually there. It's a reminder to look at it and to go through it and find ideas for all of those problems that you can identify and detect on your way through the journey.

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