NNGroup Customer Journeys (Five Elements of Journey Maps / Seven Analysis Methods · Four Mapping Approaches vs Service Blueprints/Experience Maps/Empathy Maps · Journey vs Flow vs Story Maps · Three Lines and Five Steps of Service Design and Blueprints · Project Methodology: As-Is/To-Be & Assumption-First/Research-First · CX Transformation and Journey-Centric Design · Research Foundations: CUEs/User Panels · Practical Cases: Luxury/Healthcare/AI Image Generation)
29 curated pieces from the Nielsen Norman Group customer journey knowledge base. The core thread = visualization and operation of "the holistic experience of a user interacting with a product/service across time and channels to achieve a goal". Core artifacts: Journey Map (five elements = Actor / Scenario + Expectations / Phases / Actions-Mindsets-Emotions / Opportunities; top-middle-bottom three-section structure; Emotion Curve), Experience Map (product-agnostic baseline), Service Blueprint (enterprise perspective with four swimlanes = Customer Actions / Frontstage / Backstage / Support Processes; three dividing lines = Line of Interaction / Line of Visibility / Line of Internal Interaction; 1982 Lynn Shostack), Empathy Map (four quadrants: Says/Thinks/Feels/Does), User Story Map (three layers of Activities-Steps-Details + release line, Jeff Patton, Lean UX conversion to Epic/User Story), User Flow (step path for a single product and single task, linear flow diagram), Ecosystem Map, Process Map, Sankey Diagram (nodes-links-columns, used for path analysis, Mixpanel/Amplitude/GA). Method decisions: As-is vs To-be, Assumption-First vs Research-First, low-fidelity vs high-fidelity, hybrid three-step method. Seven journey map analysis methods (unmet expectations / redundant touchpoints / emotional lows / cross-channel breakpoints / time consumption / Moment of Truth / highs). Project operations: journey mapping impact survey (300+/259 respondents, 64% collaborative creation, 56% digital tools, 7 outcome success metrics, 3.5 barrier lines, 8-factor ranking with customer participation highest at 6.08, visual design lowest at 2.18), 7-step interactive Figma maps, CX transformation framework (4 domains x 4 building blocks = 16 tasks), Journey-Centric Design vs Journey Management party hat model, UX vs Service Design, 5-step service blueprint and practice survey (97 respondents, 56% deliverables / 20% frameworks / 15% collaboration tools, focused type <2 weeks + 1 week, panoramic type <1 month). Research foundations: Contextual CUEs framework (Culture / Unspoken / Environment, Distributed Cognition DCog), User Panel 101 (customer-type/goal-type, B2C/B2B/two-sided marketplaces, 6-step setup). Practical cases: four types of luxury shoppers (browsers only / occasional splurgers / big spenders / stylists, consideration stage most critical), healthcare digital interactions (9 participants, 93 diary entries of interactions, 78 on smartphones, 32 on portals, 2/3 digital pain points), four stages of AI image generation (define-explore-refine-export, Midjourney, inspiration-oriented vs deliverable-oriented), UX storytelling (story triangle / Freytag's five-act story pyramid). Target readers = product managers, terms explained in-line, decision-oriented.