This is going to be a short blog post but it captures an important point. I get asked a lot about the role of UX and journey mapping in experience design. Journey mapping is a great way to map out stages of a customer’s lifecycle and how consumers interact with other people and technologies over time. But journey mapping isn’t a way to improve the customer experience. It’s a way to optimize service delivery.
@@Confusing service with experience is a fallacy committed by many “experience experts.”@@ If someone claims to tell you something new and innovative about experience design and you can replace the word “experience" with the word “service” and the argument is still intact, that person is probably recycling a standard service argument on you.
Experience design is concerned with more than service over time. Another way to look at it is this: Experience designers don’t map journeys. They empower people to go on a journey of their own by (re-)shaping the cultural fabric in ways that make them consumers. Here is a snapshot from a recent talk I gave:
