Playbook / Design practices / Journey Mapping
Journey Mapping
Journey mapping visualises the steps people or staff take as they move through a service, showing touchpoints, systems, decision points, and pain points along the way. It helps teams understand complex processes holistically, align around shared insights, and identify opportunities to improve experiences, efficiency, and service outcomes. The journey map captures the full, detailed insight and complexity (as a project team, we need to know all the details)
Tips
1. Use journey mapping to align multiple organisations around shared challenges
When processes differ across councils or teams, mapping helps reveal common pain points and creates a shared starting point for collaboration
2. Base journeys on real observation and shadowing
Capturing real workflows, case walkthroughs, and system interactions ensures the journey reflects the hidden administrative work that staff often cannot easily describe.
3. Link journeys to structured user needs
Pairing journey stages with a validated user-needs repository helps move from descriptive maps to actionable opportunity areas.
Iterate maps collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams. Refining journey maps with product, research, technical, and operational stakeholders strengthens accuracy and builds cross-functional ownership
4. Use journey maps as communication artefacts, not just research outputs
Converting journeys into storyboards or visual playback materials helps decision-makers quickly understand the problem space and supports funding or investment decisions.
5. Translate journeys into service or system opportunities
The value of journey mapping increases when insights are explicitly connected to automation, process redesign, or technology experimentation.
6. Use anonymised real cases rather than hypothetical journeys to make issues tangible and credible.
7. Segment journeys into meaningful user groups so interventions can be tailored rather than generic
8. Map the pre-problem phase as well as the crisis or recovery phase to identify preventative opportunities
9. Pair emotional experiences with operational touchpoints to link user impact to system causes
10. Translate journey insights into clearly defined user needs to support prioritisation and delivery
The practice helps you
Build Trust
Create consistent, transparent experiences that foster user confidence
Deliver Delight
Create emotionally engaging or enjoyable experiences for
Drive Engagement
Encourage interaction and sustained user interest
Examples of practice
Supported by
LGSDN 