Personas & Journey Maps

Personas and Journey Maps

Screenshot of a Journey Map for "Zoya" with the image of a scientist in a hijab. The Journey Map is covered on the right side by the Persona for "Zoya". Most of the information is blurred to respect my NDA.

One of the Journey Map & Persona combos we created.
(Click/tap to enlarge in a new tab)

Skills highlighted

  • User research
  • Recruiting participants
  • Organization
  • Visual design
  • Education
  • Mentoring
  • Qualitative data analysis
  • Presentations
  • Journey Maps
  • Personas

Summary: After running a training session on Personas and Journey Maps for my department, one teammate requested both for her business units, resulting in immediately useful assets that drove projects, were shared with other departments, and generated an additional Journey Map request.

The Setup

There was a large gap in user knowledge between Product Managers (PMs), Sales, Support, and Marketing, which slowed everyone down.

PMs had to re-share their knowledge, and Writers and Designers would have to go back and ask questions, then wait for responses. It also left space for assumptions and biases, allowing our understanding to drift away from the reality of our users.

Based on previous conversations where I shared the benefits of Personas and Journey Maps, a teammate for three major business groups recognized an opportunity to improve and recruited my help.

Constraints

  • Users for these three business groups were notoriously difficult to recruit for user research

What I Did

Primary tools: Miro

  • Collaborated with the Marketing Strategist to identify which Personas & Journey Maps to create first
  • Set expectations & process steps to create the needed assets, educating multiple business partners
  • Helped interview internal experts & created draft designs alongside one of my UX mentees
Screenshot of a heading saying "Data sources" with blurred lists below to respect my NDA.

Each Persona & Journey Map had a “Data Sources” section listing who was involved internally & externally to both give credit where it was due, and enhance trust in the data.

  • With help from Sales, recruited external participants to check our work – handled scheduling, incentives, running the interviews, and analyzing the results
  • Made updates based on direct user feedback & shared ready-to-use versions

Results

Full view of the "Zoya" persona created. Headings include "A typical day", "Professional Goals", "I Have to Consider...", "Frustrations", "Motivations", "Where I Get Stuck", and "What Helps Me". Information in blurred to respect my NDA.
Full view of the "Zoya" Journey for "Starting A New Product". There are multiple columns going across left-to-right with an arrow at the right looping back to the start on the left, along with several dark gray icons in the "Touchpoints" row, and a wavy up-and-down rollercoaster-like line in the middle with several emoji faces and quotes dotted throughout.

Full view of the “Zoya” Persona and Journey Map created in Miro. We significantly enhanced our first draft with user interviews, confirming some parts, editing what we got wrong, and adding things we missed.
(Click/tap to enlarge in a new tab)

  • The Marketing team immediately started using the Personas & Journey Maps and found the information extremely helpful
  • The Strategist and I were asked to present our Personas & Journey Maps to all Marketing & Products Managers at the annual Global Marketing Meeting
    • After the presentation, we immediately received a request to create a Journey Map for a different business group
  • All assets were widely shared within the company

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