User journeys
A user journey is an ordered sequence of scenarios — often drawn from several features — describing how one kind of user gets something done from start to finish.
Why they exist
A feature list tells you what the system does. It does not tell you whether a person can actually get through a task, because a task crosses features. A journey makes that crossing visible: sign in, search, open a record, amend it, and confirm — five scenarios from four features, in the order a real user meets them.
How a journey gets made
An agent drafts journeys for you, either on its own from what it found in the specification, or from a one-line statement of the outcome you have in mind.
First drafts are deliberately rough. The point is to give you something to react to instead of a blank page — reordering a draft is much faster than authoring a journey from nothing.
Refining one
Two ways, and they are for different situations:
- Structured feedback — reorder, remove, replace or insert a step. This applies immediately. Use it when you know exactly what is wrong.
- Run Refinement — describe in your own words what is wrong, and an agent reworks the journey. Use it when the shape is wrong rather than the order.
Both are recorded, so a journey carries the history of how it reached its current form.
Journeys and personas
A journey belongs to a persona — the kind of user making the trip. The same functionality often reads completely differently for an administrator and for an end user, and separating them keeps a journey honest about who it is for.
What journeys are good for
- Finding gaps. A journey that cannot be assembled from existing scenarios is telling you something is missing from the specification.
- Review. A stakeholder who will not read 200 scenarios will read a journey.
- Ordering the work. A journey shows which features have to exist together before anything is demonstrable.