Journey Map: Choosing a Meal Kit Service

In life, everyone is on a journey with experiences unique to each individual. Distinct journeys also occur for customers and users in general business and user experience design.

What is a Journey Map?

A journey map is a visualization of the process that a user or customer goes through to accomplish a goal. Journey maps also track how the user feels about their journey along the way. This tool allows designers of a product, service, or experience to follow their user’s steps and experience their brand as their users would. Journeying alongside the user highlights pain points that designers can target to improve the user experience.

How to Create a Journey Map

Journey maps come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Whether you use sticky notes on a board, draw illustrations, or create an infographic, there are no restrictions on the design of a journey map as long as the information within the map is dissectible and formatted in a way that can be easily followed. Furthermore, every solid journey map covers specific components needed to analyze the user’s journey effectively. 

Journey Map Examples

Journey Map Components

• Persona: A character created to represent a specific user. A user persona is a believable figure with a name, face, thoughts, feelings, and characteristics that resemble real users of the product or service. 
• Timeline: Variable phases within the journey and/or a real timeline including, hours months, etc. 
• Emotion: Depictions of how the user is feeling within different phases of the journey. Emotion addresses peaks and valleys such as feeling anxious or feeling assured.
• Touchpoints: Direct user interactions and actions with the organization. This area notes the actual steps the user is taking.
• Channels: The context of use. This is how the user’s actions take place, whether via online browsing, interpersonal discussion, a mobile application, etc.

My Meal Kit Journey Map

This week, I created a journey map on choosing a meal kit service. To view the complete journey map, download the PDF below. For now, I’ll share my user persona, timeline, emotions, actions and channels, and final insights.

Background

A meal kit is a subscription service–foodservice business model where a company sends customers pre-portioned and sometimes partially-prepared food ingredients and recipes to prepare homecooked meals. In the past ten years, the demand for meal kit services has increased in the United States. 

Nova is new to the meal kit service scene. She doesn’t know what to look for or expect. In this journey map, we’ll track her steps, assessing her actions, thoughts, emotions, and more. We’ll also find opportunities for improvement.

Persona

Novice Nova

Nova is a working professional. She balances a full-time job as a director of communications and a part-time position as an entrepreneur and the CEO of her own organization. Nova commits a great deal of her time and energy to her work. When she’s not working, she’s likely networking.

Recently, Nova realized she would prefer to commit the time she spends recipe researching, grocery shopping, and preparing meals to other things. She wants to eat well-balanced meals and remain productive. In the kitchen, Nova is looking to work smarter, not harder. She would rather think of more meaningful things in place of wondering what’s for dinner.

Timeline

Here are the phases of finding a meal kit service:

• Consideration: This is Novice Nova’s starting point. In this first phase, Nova realizes that she needs a way to simplify grocery shopping and meal preparation in order to maintain her productivity. She searches for feasible meal preparation alternatives.
• Exploration: Once Nova learns about meal kit services, she decides to look into a handful of meal kit service companies. She learns about costs, servings, recipe options, etc., and compares multiple services through reviews online and observations of each service’s online presence. Through hearing about other peoples’ experiences, Nova learns how meal kit services work.
• Decision: In this phase, Nova has narrowed down her service. Through last-minute research via multiple channels, Nova’s goal is to select the service that will suit her best. This takes an additional one to two hours.
• Sign Up & Selection: Nova progresses in her journey by creating an account using the service’s website and/or mobile app. She takes time to familiarize herself with the site/app and recipes. Finally, she selects the meals she wants to cook for her first order. This step takes 40 minutes to one and a half hours.
• Delivery & Trial: Nova is excited to receive her first meal kit order. The wait time for her first delivery is about five to seven days. She tracks her package, and when it arrives, she unboxes and stores the ingredients, prepares her first meal, and eats! 
• Reflection: In this final phase, Nova has completed her week-long trial. She reflects on her first meal-kit experience by asking herself several questions to assess whether she would like to keep or cancel her subscription. 

Emotions

I used the following emotions to depict Nova’s feeling within each phase:

• Neutral: Indifference, Unbothered
• Unsure: Hesitant, Needing Clarity
• Lost: Disoriented, Overwhelmed
• Confident: Ready, Equipped
• Optimistic: Hopeful, Expectant
• Assured: Comfortable, Secure
• Pain Point: A step in the journey that highlights a specific problem the user is experiencing

Actions & Channels

Here are Nova’s four go-to actions and channels along the way:

• Interpersonal Discussion: Speaking with others to gain insight into their thoughts and experiences regarding various meal kit services
• Social Media: Using social media platforms to observe the online presence of different services and find first-hand reviews 
• Mobile App: Using the selected service’s mobile application to create an account and place orders
• Online Browsing: Searching online for research purposes including finding reviews, ratings, online forums, blog posts, and more. Nova also goes online to find, observe, and utilize the meal kit service sites 

Final Insights

To help avert some of the pain points that novice meal kit users may encounter, meal kit services can explore the following:

• Simplified meal kit information including plans, delivery, etc. so that users are not overwhelmed while stepping into a new experience characterized by meal kit jargon
• A one-time introductory kit. The kit can be provided at a lower cost. This can help new users determine if the service is right for them with no strings attached
• Explainer videos that offer further insight into the meal kit service process from start to finish
• A custom welcome package when a customer orders their first kit. This would help users get acquainted with the practical side of meal kit services more easily instead of receiving a box full of ingredients and having to figure it out
• An order breakdown sheet so users know how their separate meals are packaged and how to store them
• Recipe videos accessible on the service’s website and/or app to make the cooking experience more seamless
• Interaction with the user to gain a direct understanding of what improvements they need. This can look like email surveys, in-app rating requests, customer service check-in calls, etc.