journey-map

owl-listener/designer-skills

Map a persona's end-to-end experience across stages, touchpoints, emotions, and pain points.

What is journey-map?

Journey Map creates a comprehensive visualization of a single user persona's experience from awareness through post-use, capturing goals, actions, touchpoints, emotions, and friction points at each stage. Use it when analyzing and improving existing products or services, or when you need to understand the full customer lifecycle for a specific user segment.

Define 5-7 journey stages from awareness through advocacy
Map user goals, actions, and touchpoints for each stage
Track emotional state and sentiment across the journey
Identify pain points and friction at critical moments
Highlight design opportunities ranked by impact and feasibility
Visualize the emotional curve to spot peaks and valleys

How to install journey-map

npx skills add https://github.com/owl-listener/designer-skills --skill journey-map

Prerequisites

Research data, personas, or analytics about your target user (optional but helpful)
Clear definition of the product, service, or feature you're mapping
Understanding of your target persona and their primary use scenario

Claude Code

Cursor

Windsurf

Cline

How to use journey-map

1.Provide the product/feature name and describe your target user or persona
2.Share any research data, user interviews, or analytics files if available
3.Confirm the journey boundaries: where does the experience start and end?
4.Review the mapped stages and validate that goals, actions, and touchpoints match your research
5.Examine the emotional curve to identify where sentiment dips or peaks
6.Review the prioritized opportunities and moments of truth
7.Use the map to guide design decisions and communicate insights to your team

Use cases

Good for

Improving an existing product by understanding where current users struggle most
Redesigning a service experience across multiple channels and touchpoints
Identifying gaps between user expectations and actual experience at each stage
Prioritizing which pain points to address first based on emotional impact
Communicating user needs and frustrations to stakeholders with visual evidence

Who it's for

UX researchers and designers analyzing user behavior
Product managers prioritizing improvements to existing experiences
Service designers mapping multi-step customer interactions
Design teams presenting user insights to stakeholders
Teams focused on improving customer satisfaction and retention

journey-map FAQ

How is journey-map different from experience-map?

Journey Map focuses on one persona's end-to-end experience with detailed emotional and pain-point analysis. Experience Map (in ux-strategy) visualizes the broader multi-channel ecosystem and how different personas interact across touchpoints. Use journey-map for deep single-user analysis; use experience-map for system-wide channel mapping.

Should I map current state or future state?

Start with the current state (as-is) to understand existing friction and emotions. Then highlight opportunity areas where the future state could improve. This before-and-after view helps prioritize which pain points to address first.

How many stages should a journey map have?

Typically 5-7 stages work best, spanning from initial awareness through post-use and advocacy. The exact number depends on your product complexity and user scenario. Too few stages miss important details; too many become unwieldy.

What if I don't have detailed user research?

You can start with your best assumptions based on product knowledge, then validate with real user data later. The skill will help you structure what you know and identify gaps where you need more research.

Can I map multiple personas?

Journey maps are most effective when persona-specific. If you need to map multiple personas, create separate journey maps for each one so you can see how their experiences differ at each stage.

Full instructions (SKILL.md)

Source of truth, from owl-listener/designer-skills.

name: journey-map description: Map one persona's end-to-end experience with stages, touchpoints, emotions, and pain points. Use when improving an existing experience. For the multi-channel ecosystem use `experience-map` (ux-strategy); for screen-level paths use `user-flow-diagram` (prototyping-testing).

Journey Map

Create a comprehensive user journey map for product design and UX analysis.

Context

You are a senior UX researcher helping a design team map the user journey for $ARGUMENTS. If the user provides files (research data, personas, analytics), read them first.

Domain Context

Journey Mapping (Jim Kalbach, Mapping Experiences): Visualizing the end-to-end experience across stages, touchpoints, channels, emotions, and pain points.
Each stage should capture: user goals, actions, touchpoints, emotions, pain points, and opportunities.
Journey maps should be persona-specific when possible.
Include both the current state (as-is) and highlight opportunity areas for the future state.

Instructions

The user will describe the product/feature and target user. Work through these steps:

Clarify scope: Confirm the persona, scenario, and journey boundaries (start and end points).
Define stages: Identify 5-7 journey stages from awareness through post-use/advocacy.
Map each stage with:
- User goals for this stage
- Actions and behaviors
- Touchpoints and channels
- Thoughts and questions
- Emotional state (rate on a positive/negative scale)
- Pain points and friction
- Opportunity areas for design improvement
Visualize the emotional curve: Show how emotions rise and fall across stages.
Prioritize opportunities: Rank the top 3-5 design opportunities by impact and feasibility.
Identify moments of truth: Highlight the critical moments that make or break the experience.
Think step by step. Present in a clear, structured format.