Journey Mapping & Service Design

Use When

You need an evidence-based persona — a research-grounded archetype with goals, context, and jobs — not a demographic stock photo invented to justify a roadmap.
You must map a user's or customer's experience over time across stages, touchpoints, and channels: a current-state journey map, a future-state map, or a broader experience map (organisation-agnostic, before a specific product exists).
You are designing or fixing a service, not just a UI — you need a service blueprint that ties what the customer sees (frontstage) to the staff actions, systems, and processes that deliver it (backstage + support), separated by the line of visibility.
You need to express what the customer is fundamentally trying to accomplish as Jobs-To-Be-Done ("when I ___, I want to ___, so I can ___") so the design serves the job, not the feature.
You have research and a map and must produce an alignment diagram (research → map → opportunities) and a ranked opportunity backlog that the team can act on.

You are running the interviews, surveys, or usability tests that feed the map → use the sibling ux-research-and-usability-testing (that skill gathers the evidence; this skill structures it over time). The two pair — see Workflow steps 1 and 8.
You are designing a single screen's structure, fidelity, or flow → use the sibling wireframing-and-prototyping (a wireflow is one touchpoint's mechanics; a journey map is the experience around it).
You are applying cognitive/behavioural theory or heuristics to a design (biases, cognitive load, Gestalt, Nielsen) → use ux-psychology.
You are defining the end-to-end product/discovery operating model, RACI, and rituals → use enterprise-ux-process.