NationBuilder is a complex, large scale product, has been added to gradually over 14 years, and serves multiple use cases. When employees onboard, most of the first 90 days is spent learning about the product and what it does - we even dedicate a Trello board to tracking the learning new employees undergo.
I was the sole designer for the company when we hired another designer, and she needed to quickly understand the scope of our customer onboarding flows, which she was tasked with addressing. Instead of leaving her on her own to learn, or going heads down one-on-one with her, we decided to bring in other team members for a workshop. Our goal was to create artifacts that new members of the product and design teams could use to understand our customer onboarding flow at a glance.
I recruited two of our more experienced product managers to participate in a user journey mapping exercise for our primary product (NationBuilder). I prepared goals and agenda for the workshop and pre-populated a Miro board with a user journey map framework and a full sequential inventory of screenshots for the acquisition and activation steps.
During the workshop, I reviewed the goals of the session as well as the relevant personas, and walked the PMs (who were unfamiliar with user journey mapping) through the framework. After seeding the framework with sticky notes, we independently filled in the actions, pain points, etc. for each step of the journey. Then I led participants in a collaborative discussion and grouping exercise, and identified opportunities to improve the user experience using visually distinct and easily recognizable emojis.
As a separate project, I created a user journey map for our ancillary product, ActionButton, as I was the resident subject matter expert on the user experience. Using Miro and screenshots from the existing product, I created a visual flow of how customers experience key user flows in ActionButton.
The resulting design artifacts have helped new employees understand the shape of our customers’ experience and opportunities for improvement. Additionally, for those of us who already know and have experienced the product, they’ve served as a springboard for subsequent cross-functional ideation workshops to address the needs and pain points we identified and documented.
As the product continues to evolve, I'm updating these artifacts to reflect those changes. One of my key takeaways from this project is that user journeys should be documented earlier in the product development process. As a design team, we're committed to undertaking user journey mapping during ideation in order to guide the design process of future features.