Thousands of articles have been written about journey mapping, but very few tackle a fundamental issue: How do you decide what journeys to map, especially if it’s a new concept? If you’re a CX, UX or service designer this neat little trick can help.

Here’s how to do it:

1: Brainstorm a list of significant factors relating to your customers or their scenario. This can be anything: their goal, their expertise level, the existing products and services they use, the channels available to them, whether they're a new or repeat customer, etc. There are no rules - just try to capture every relevant factor in the rows of a spreadsheet (see pic). 

2: Identify common combinations of these factors — E.g. A new customer, without an account, low expertise, no existing products, using our website, to learn about our offerings — then give each combination it’s own column in the spreadsheet (see pic).

3: Prioritize and consolidate the scenarios (you’ll usually find that a handful of them cover most permutations). 

4: Use these scenarios as the basis for analyzing their journey.

Two huge benefits:
1. Less risk of missing important factors and considerations
2. Better and earlier alignment about what you’re actually designing!

See this post on LinkedIn