Journey maps illustrate people's thoughts, feelings and actions as they progress toward a goal. Journeys we have documented so far include:
- Prospective student journey map: Steps prospective students take as they investigate options, apply for admission, accept an offer and transition to being a student at McGill.
- Current student journey maps: Steps current students take from their arrival at McGill in their foundation year to graduation.
- Academic and career planning - Steps students take as they manage and track progress toward achieving academic and career goals.
- Becoming part of a community - Steps students take as they are introduced to and become part of the McGill community.
Journey maps for common activities are also increasingly available online.
When to use journey maps
Insights captured in our journey maps can help you:
- Make choices based on audience preferences.
- Identify gaps and areas for improvement.
- Align your team goals and objectives by providing a shared frame of reference.
Below are some ideas for ways to use journey maps to inform your work.
Inform web project decisions
- Be user-focused: Improve your understanding of your audience members' requirements. Use these insights to inform decisions when designing your content and layouts.
- Support decisions with data: Make choices based on audience feedback recorded in the journey maps (in addition to other data sources). Avoid making assumptions.
- Less is more: Don't duplicate content. Identify where information should live, and link to (or invite others to link to!) that resource.
Define web strategy
- Be user-focused: Develop empathy for audience members' experiences. Consider your audience members' thoughts and feelings - not just their actions - when determining how to provide support.
- Make sites accessible and inclusive: Our websites must strive to be accessible and inclusive to all users. Ensure you include the perspectives of all audience members when defining your web strategy (we take steps to ensure audience data in our journey maps reflects a balanced representation of our various audiences).
- Be consistent: When people visit McGill websites their experience should feel positive and consistent. Use these central resources to increase alignment with the efforts of other web teams.
- Less is more: Avoid overwhelming users with unnecessary details. Concentrate on the information they need to complete the key steps in their journey. Consider cutting, minimizing, or relocating other information.
Revise web processes
- Collaborate and share: Identify opportunities to collaborate with other departments connected to your user journey.
- Be consistent: Use these central resources to improve alignment with the practices of other web teams who support our audience journeys. For example, do you use similar language and style choices when communicating with audience members?
Journey mapping basics
New to journey maps? Read our article, Mapping the digital journey of our current students to learn the basics about McGill's journey maps. Topics covered in this article include:
- What is a digital journey map?
- Why do we create digital journey maps?
- How are our journey maps created?
- How are we using our journey maps?
- Projects informed by our digital journey maps.
- Additional resources for learning about journey mapping.
Journey mapping tools and resources
Journey mapping worksheet template
You can build off our existing journey maps to create journey maps tailored to your faculty or department audiences. You can also build new journey maps based on audiences not currently covered in our institutional journey maps.
Learn about journey mapping
- Suggested reading:
- Enroll in our UX at McGill training course:
- Learn about journey mapping and other UX research exercises you can do to inform your website projects. See course description: WS 103 - UX at McGill.
- Use our journey mapping template worksheet to:
- Create journey maps;
- Structure journey mapping discussions.
Web Services journey mapping template worksheet on Mural
Web Services journey mapping template worksheet is built on the Mural platform. Mural is an online visual tool and collaboration space supported by McGill Teaching and Learning Services (TLS). Read more about Mural on the TLS website.