Here’s a list of NN/g’s most useful introductory articles and videos about customer journey design and related topics. Within each section, the resources are in recommended reading order.
Resources in this study guide are grouped under the following topics:
Customer Journeys and Customer Experience: An Overview
UX work has traditionally focused on interface design and optimizing the experience for single digital interactions. However, not all experiences are so granular and targeted. When users interact with an organization’s products over time and across devices to achieve larger goals, these related interactions make up a customer journey. Customer journeys should also be researched and designed to result in enjoyable customer experiences.
If you’re new to customer-journey-level experience design, we recommend that you explore the following resources in order, from top to bottom.
Research and Mapping
Research is always a crucial early step in UX design, and journey-level experience design is no different. Because journeys are longitudinal and include many interactions, the methods and outputs we use to research, analyze, and document the omnichannel experience are different from those commonly used for the UX of single interactions. They often involve context-research methods such as field studies and diary studies and mapping methods that help distill the research into visuals such as journey maps, and service blueprints.
Journey maps and service blueprints are two common research outputs used to document findings from research activities. They also serve as strategic deliverables from which to begin ideating around solutions for the experience problems identified within them.
The articles and videos in this section introduce you to the methods and mapping practices commonly used to understand customer journeys.
Other study guides that synthesize resources related to the methods above:
Designing an Effective Omnichannel Experience
A great customer experience is the product of a well-designed omnichannel ecosystem. There are five components that together create a successful omnichannel user experience: Consistency, Optimization, Seamlessness, Orchestration, and Collaboration.
These components and other journey-design considerations are discussed in the following articles.
Journey Management and Other Operational Considerations
Organizational structures and operational business practices were created before internet-connected devices existed. Companies have adapted to include digital product teams and UX practices so they can create and maintain the tools needed to serve modern customers. However, in most organizations, UX work stops there — at designing individual interactions.
The experience customers have with organizations during a customer journey impacts their ongoing relationship with that company. For this reason, it’s become increasingly important for businesses to prioritize experience design at the journey level. Customers touch many different products and channels as their journeys progress, and the experience on each of these is often designed and owned by different groups within the organization. These groups must work together to design a cohesive experience across touchpoints. That is why adopting a journey-centric design approach requires organizational and operational change.
Use the resources in this section to explore the organizational components that affect the quality of the journey experience.
Additional Resources
Service design is the activity of planning and organizing business resources to improve the employees’ experience and the customers’ experience.
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