In a recent discussion with a group of UX trainees, an intriguing question surfaced from Shola, one of the trainees: Can we employ user journey maps to understand users’ experience beyond their interactions with our product? This inquiry prompted a thoughtful reflection on the conventional definition of user journey maps.
Commonly, a user journey map is defined as a visual representation of what a user must do to achieve a goal and outlines the experience they have with your brand (Qualtrics XM). Alternatively, UX Design Institute simply says that a customer (or user) journey map is a visual representation of how a user interacts with your product. While these definitions appropriately focus on ‘our product’ and ‘our users’ interactions with them, they overlook the broader landscape outside our immediate product or brand.
Ella added another layer to the discussion by questioning whether user journey maps could extend beyond tech products like being used to analyze users in their traditional environment before a tech solution is built to solve whatever problem they may have. This perspective aligns with a real-world scenario involving a problem exploration study I was part of.
Case in Point: A Problem Exploration Study
As part of a 4-man UX research team, we went to five major local markets in Ghana, to conduct in-depth interviews with 324 micro and small business owners, over seven weeks. The primary objective was to understand why these businesses were not inclined to save with or borrow from microfinance banks. Our focus was on discerning whether these entrepreneurs had alternative means of saving and borrowing and gauging their interest in loans for business expansion. It’s important to emphasize that our goal was not to enhance the user experience of an existing tech product; rather, we aimed to comprehend the saving and borrowing behavior of this specific group of business owners.
Our investigation showed a well-established alternative, an age-old group-saving method known as ‘susu.’ It is not a tech product from an organized corporate entity, susu is a traditional thrift system where local traders form groups of varying sizes, ranging from 10 to 100 individuals or more. These groups could be unions, cooperative societies, or simply associations of friends. A leader convenes the group, comprising known friends or co-entrepreneurs who are well-acquainted. A susu collector, often someone familiar to the group, is chosen. This independent thrift collector moves from stall to stall, collecting daily or weekly contributions and earns a commission for their service. Members of the group can take loans but must repay them by the year’s end because the fund is normally disbursed, part of it back to members and the other part of it used to organize an annual carnival.
User Journey Map for a Traditional System of Saving and Borrowing
To identify potential problem areas or pain points, it was necessary to understand the user journey map of these micro and small business owners. This involved analyzing their motivations and goals, thoughts and feelings; basically empathizing with the user group.
It’s crucial to recognize that our study focused on these business owners in relation to a traditional thrift method of saving and borrowing. This raises the question: Do the conventional stages of a user journey map — awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy stages — apply in cases like these?
While scientific studies should adhere to a method, flexibility is essential to accommodate unique scenarios. For instance, these business owners do not revisit the awareness or decision stages daily; they have already committed to the process. Our study was not centered on how they discover susu; rather, we sought to identify if susu presented any unbearable pain points. So we looked at more appropriate stages of their user journey: earn, save, borrow, repay, and celebrate. The user journey map, depicted in Figure 1 below, reflects our user persona’s experiences.
Figure 1: User Journey Map from a Pre-product UX Problem Exploration Study
We observed that challenges typically emerge during the third stage, when a saver intends to borrow, facing one of three issues:
a. Insufficient funds to borrow from because other members of the group have borrowed extensively.
b. Susu collectors act unscrupulously by disappearing with contributors’ funds, a trend that is increasingly causing groups to lose trust in these collectors.
c. Members secure a loan but receive it too late in the year, making it challenging to complete the repayment by year-end. This results in discomfort for the group and may lead to fines, impacting the borrower’s reputation.
From stage 3 onward, micro and small business owners, or the entire group, grapple with various challenges. Failure to secure a loan disrupts their individual plans, delayed loans affect repayment deadlines, and unscrupulous susu collectors jeopardize the group’s financial well-being. Confronted with this revelation, we initiated the pivotal question: How might we? How might we help fix the holes in this fine traditional system? How might we ensure that funds are always available to borrowers on request? How might we ensure that they do not have to repay under pressure? How might we eliminate the possibility of susu collectors running away with savers’ money? How might we create a solution to the pain points?
Please take a look at the comprehensive UX research case study by clicking on the link provided
A Broader Perspective on User Journey Maps
Wrapping up, Shola and Ella’s questions challenged the conventional confines of user journey maps, suggesting a broader application beyond their own products or tech-centric environments. This expanded view acknowledges that user journey maps can be instrumental in analyzing the experiences of a user group in relation to our product, to traditional non-tech practice, or to other company’s products as well.
One may look at the user journey of a group in connection to how they currently solve a non-tech life problem and find broken sections that may lead to the development of a tech solution for better experiences, or look at it in connection to another company’s product and use the insight to develop a new and better solution. The last approach is often used by B2B founders, leveraging industry expertise to build enhanced services. For instance, a banker frustrated by unaddressed customer complaints may quit the bank, establish a company, develop the solution to that particular customer problem, and offer it as a B2B service to the bank via API.
The end.