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User Journey Mapping

Overview

This initiative establishes a systemic approach to creating and maintaining user journeys across all primary jobs in our product. By documenting how users accomplish their core tasks, we'll create a foundational resource that improves design decisions, enhances user experience, and aligns teams around user needs.

Background

Currently, our understanding of user workflows varies across teams, leading to inconsistent design decisions and potential gaps in the user experience. A comprehensive set of user journeys will provide shared context and ensure we're designing with complete user workflows in mind rather than isolated features.

Value & Impact

For the design team:

  • Holistic perspective: See beyond individual features to understand complete user workflows
  • Consistent design decisions: Make informed choices based on documented user context and pain points
  • Improved handoffs: Share user context more effectively with engineering and product management
  • Design validation: Test designs against real user journeys to identify potential friction points
  • Onboarding acceleration: New team members can quickly understand user workflows and context

For the organization:

  • Shared user understanding across all teams and stakeholders
  • Strategic alignment on user priorities and pain points
  • Risk mitigation by identifying potential workflow disruptions before implementation
  • Feature prioritization based on journey impact rather than isolated requirements

Initiative Structure

Working Group (Currently Active - MR)

  • Standardized definitions for key concepts (user journey, golden journey, journey map, job hierarchy/fidelity)
  • Consistent terminology and usage guidelines across the organization
  • Journey creating templates and frameworks
  • Central repository system for storing and accessing completed journeys
  • Documentation standards and maintenance process in the handbook

Journey Creation and Implementation

  • Managers and designers collaborate with product management and engineering to create journeys for each primary job
  • Systematic documentation of current state workflows
  • Identification of pain points, opportunities, and design implications
  • Integration of findings into existing design and product processes

SDLC Golden Journey Research

  • Map the golden user journey throughout the software development lifecycle from a software engineer's perspective doing feature development end-to-end
  • Conduct comprehensive user research including interviews (17 participants), surveys (100+ responses), and workflow analysis over 12 weeks
  • Document existing workflows, identify friction points and "red threads" that deviate from optimal user paths
  • Discover specific opportunities for Duo Workflow to enhance productivity through AI assistance
  • Deliver prioritized integration opportunities with impact analysis and actionable recommendations for the product roadmap

TW User Journey training & docs site research (Issue)

  • Learn context by reviewing GitLab resources, get a foundational intro, and take the main training course
  • Do a competitive analysis based on a user journey

Success Metrics

  • Complete set of user journeys covering all primary jobs
  • Documented templates and standards adopted across R&D
  • Central repository established and actively maintained
  • Design decisions reference against relevant user journeys in documentation
  • Reduced time for new team members to understand user context
  • SDLC golden journey documented with quantified pain points and red threads
  • At least 5 high-value Duo Workflow integration opportunities identified
  • Stakeholder alignment on prioritization (measured by post-presentation survey)
  • Actionable recommendations incorporated into the product roadmap
  • Reusable research artifacts that continue to inform decisions beyond project completion
  • Complete the training materials for user journeys
  • Complete a competitive analysis utilizing a user journey
Edited by Valerie Karnes