The Art of Journey Mapping: Enhancing The User’s Experience Through Empathy

Dec 6, 2024 | Education

Journey mapping is a cornerstone of our design process at Concetti, rooted in a deep understanding of the user’s experience. CEO and Principal Designer Rachel Nelson, with her strong background in design thinking, recognized the importance of incorporating journey mapping early on. This method—originally honed through design thinking workshops—allows us to anticipate and address potential pain points, whether we're designing for customers, employees, or families. While it’s especially powerful in commercial settings, its principles are just as valuable in residential design.

What is Journey Mapping?

Journey mapping is one of the first steps in our three-phase, human-centric approach. It’s all about visually mapping out a user’s journey across different touch points. This process helps us get into the mindset of the homeowner or business owner, understand their needs, and anticipate their behavior. By doing this, we can create spaces or systems that not only meet but exceed expectations, making the overall experience smoother and more enjoyable for every user.

We start with a simple yet profound question: “How can we make the user's experience better?” This question drives the entire journey mapping process, guiding our designers to think deeply and empathize with the user at every step—from the first interaction to the final touchpoint. Every stage is carefully considered and optimized to enhance the overall experience.

Journey Mapping in Commercial Spaces

In commercial design, journey mapping is crucial for enhancing both customer and employee experiences. For instance, when we worked on the retail space for Good Cakes and Bakes, journey mapping helped us identify the distinct needs of the baker and the point-of-sale employee, who each have unique paths within the same environment. By recognizing these differences, we were able to design a workspace that’s both efficient and comfortable.

During this project, journey mapping revealed inefficiencies in how ingredients were stored and accessed. Bakers had to crisscross the kitchen multiple times to grab ingredients from separate refrigerators, wasting time and increasing the risk of accidents. By simply reorganizing the space and placing the refrigerators side by side, we helped Good Cakes and Bakes streamline their process, reduce labor costs, and boost efficiency.

Another important aspect of journey mapping in commercial spaces is understanding that customers and employees, though they share the same space, have distinctly different experiences. A customer might enter, browse, and make a purchase, while an employee is focused on fulfilling orders behind the counter. By mapping out these different journeys, we can design spaces that meet the needs of both groups, ensuring a smooth and enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Applying Journey Mapping to Residential Design

While journey mapping is often associated with commercial design, the same principles can be a game-changer in residential spaces. In home design, we often call this process “programming.” It’s all about understanding how a family or individual will interact with their home, ensuring that the space works perfectly for their daily life.

Take Sweet as Can Be in Beverly, for example. In open-concept living areas, journey mapping can help spot potential issues before they become problems. For clients Katie and Tyler, it was essential to create a space where a parent could keep an eye on the kids while cooking, balancing safety and convenience. Another great example are homes designed for entertaining—journey mapping can ensure the dining room is positioned just right, so conversation flows easily between the kitchen and guests.

But there is a key difference between journey mapping for homes and commercial spaces. Homes typically have predictable, standard features like kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms, making the process more straightforward. On the other hand, commercial spaces are often tailored to specific business needs, requiring a more customized approach to journey mapping.

The Value of a Human-Centric Approach

At its core, journey mapping is about empathy—understanding the user’s experience and designing spaces that truly meet their needs. That’s what Concetti is all about. Whether we’re working on a commercial project or a residential one, our human-centric approach ensures that the spaces we create are not just functional but also resonate with the people who use them.

In a commercial setting, this could mean higher profits and lower operating costs. In a home, it translates to a more comfortable and enjoyable living environment that reflects a client’s lifestyle and their chapter of life.

Need help with journey mapping for your space? We’re here to make it happen. If you’re not ready to start yet, here’s a quick tip: Take a moment to observe how people move through your space. A small change can significantly improve the experience.

LET’S CONNECT

Hi Sam! We’re excited to catch up with you today. Let’s start with: How does a strong brand identity impact your mental health as a small business owner?

Sam: It gives me so much mental peace and saves a ton of time when trying to create new graphics. I love that I have so much more clarity and confidence knowing that my brand is speaking to my values and the feelings I want to convey when new clients are finding me. It’s so easy to see different templates in Canva and choose a different style every time and now I don’t have to worry about that!

We’re so happy we could help provide that clarity and confidence. How do you see your new brand impacting the success of your business and the experience your clients have?

Sam: Besides having more confidence to share my digital assets and grow a bigger online presence, it gives my clients a cohesive experience and taste of what they will feel like working with me even before they book a service or join a program. Plus, a clearer brand identity will be helpful for attracting more aligned collaborations.

Why should small businesses invest in branding?

Sam: Because it is a part of your business! Brand is not something just for big corporations. No matter the size of your business it’s that step beyond what you sell that creates connection with your customers and long-time raving fans.

Rachel, we’d love to start this conversation off with the same question we asked Sam – how does a strong brand identity impact your mental health as a small business owner?

Rachel: Wow! I love this question! We all want to feel seen and heard and the same goes for our business. A strong brand identity captures your brand persona and translates it into verbal and visual expressions. So often as a business owner, we are so caught up in the passion for industry, and speak in jargon that we often can’t see the trees through the forest. It all feels so important to us that we need to work with a brand partner who can reflect back to us what they are hearing. It is a soulful experience. Having gone through a rebrand for Concetti it means everything. And having worked with many small business owners on their brand, it’s a very powerful experience. To sit there and hear and see your brand come to life, the things you’ve been trying to say, the messages you’ve been trying to get across, the feeling you want people to feel, to see it come together in front of your eyes is incredible! Remember your brand is an extension of YOU!

How has investing in a wellness coach impacted your mental health as a business owner?

Rachel: Your business is an extension of yourself because it is your vision and your passion. So anything you are doing for yourself is going to show up in the business. I would say the biggest impact it has had is the ability to regulate my nervous system. It is so easy to slip into fight and flight mode when you are making big decisions daily. Building an awareness around what my body is feeling has empowered me to regulate my nervous system. Feeling the rush of emotions, letting it pass and then making a decision from a grounded place, instead of a reactive one, is a game changer.

How does it impact your team?

Rachel: Having Sam work with the team has been a dream come true. The fact is we spend so much of our lives working, so to have it be a place where we can be our full selves is important to me. Having come from many years of being in the performing arts, teamwork is ingrained in my DNA. I love when a group of people can come together to achieve great things. One of the things that I realized through working with Sam was that I was still treating life like I was preparing for world championships that never came. I am so grateful and proud of my work ethic and realized that it is equally important to pause and reflect on successes as a team and set intentions for the next quarter to create camaraderie and focus. No one wants to feel like there’s an endless to do list that never gets done, you will burn out. Sam works with the team on a quarterly basis where we either have a VIP day or a Concetti retreat. It is something the team looks forward to. And I love hearing how the work we do together is positively impacting their personal lives as well.

How does this culture approach allow your team to better serve your clients and other small businesses in the community?

Rachel: I think we’ve all heard the saying you can’t pour from an empty cup. It all starts with taking care of yourself first, taking care of the team, so we can show up fully for our clients and other professional partners. We talk a lot about having an empathetic journey, everyone’s experiences valid. And it is our responsibility to be self reflective and how we are showing up, doing what we say we’re going to do, and not stop until we’re proud of the work we’re doing. Because when we can all be ourselves, more good goes out into the world. It is a ripple effect that can surely be felt.

Ready to feel more aligned and less overwhelmed in your business? Let’s create a brand that supports your goals and your mental well-being—schedule a call with our team to get started.

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