How can you validate user journey testing to reduce support and maintenance costs?

Define Clear User Journeys: Start by clearly defining the intended user journeys for your product or service. Document the key steps, touchpoints, and interactions users will go through to accomplish their goals. This provides a framework for testing and validation.

Use multiple sources of data: One way to validate user journey testing is to use multiple sources of data to triangulate your findings. For example, you can combine qualitative data from interviews, surveys, or observations with quantitative data from analytics, metrics, or experiments. This way, you can cross-check your assumptions, verify your hypotheses, and confirm your insights. Using multiple sources of data can also help you avoid biases, outliers, or anomalies that might skew your results.

Gather Quantitative Data: Track metrics like: Time on task Clicks to completion Error rates Task success rates User satisfaction ratings

One thing I’ve found helpful while creating user journeys is to consider various data sets. You need to cross validate different touch points involving users to be able to get a bias less result and effective validation of your user journey goal

Validating user journey testing through real user interactions and realistic contexts can lead to proactive enhancement of user experiences and reduction in support and maintenance costs. Prioritizing accessibility, gathering user feedback, and fostering a user-centered design culture are crucial for creating sustainable and profitable user experiences. Cross-functional collaboration between design, development, and support teams is essential for aligning insights from user journey testing and proactively addressing potential support and maintenance challenges.

It is very crucial to employ real life users and not “Subject Matter Experts” as often the users who use the application have completely different experiences compared to SME’s. The insights you are going to get by interviewing, observing real users could be used to identify and create user journey maps to better inform your design.

Observe real users interacting with your product to identify usability issues and pain points. Use techniques like: Think-aloud protocols: Ask users to verbalize their thoughts as they navigate. Task completion exercises: Observe how users complete specific tasks. Eye-tracking heatmaps: Visualize user attention and focus areas.

Given that you are designing for real consumers, it makes perfect sense to test with real users. Conducting user journey tests with real users brings a variety of perspectives and behaviors, resulting in a more authentic representation of the target audience. Their feedback is crucial in refining the user journey, improving usability, and resolving pain points?that may not be obvious in internal testing.

Definitely when your target audience is well defined, you will find it easy to validate user journey testing. Involving real users will give you clear insight as to how these real users interact with your product and probably make you have a clear understanding of on how to come up with the possible best solution.

To validate user journey testing using real users, follow these steps: 1. Define User Personas: 2. Recruit Diverse Participants: 3. Create Realistic Scenarios: 4. Use Prototypes or Live Versions: 5. Employ Moderated Testing: 6. Collect Quantitative Data: 7. Record and Analyze Sessions: 8. Gather Feedback on Each Touchpoint: 9. Iterate Based on Feedback: 10. Repeat Testing Iteratively

Prioritize Accessibility: Ensure user journeys are accessible to people with disabilities, reducing support needs and broadening your user base. Incorporate User Feedback: Continuously gather feedback through surveys, feedback forms, and user interviews to stay informed about user experiences and identify potential issues early on. Embrace a Culture of User-Centered Design: Foster a mindset across the organization that prioritizes user needs and continuous improvement through testing and iteration.

Your App/Site should also be the best way for you to collect live user data. Implement third party add-ons for User tracking or add to your feature development list. Continual improvement requires continual data collection from your Users. ??

Address identified issues through design changes and optimizations. Test and refine solutions iteratively to ensure effectiveness.

Validating user journey testing effectively reduces support and maintenance costs. By simulating user interactions, identifying pain points, and addressing issues early in the design process, teams can proactively enhance the user experience. Iterative testing minimizes post-launch support needs, leading to a more robust and user-friendly product. Additionally, user feedback during testing informs strategic improvements, reducing the likelihood of costly post-release fixes. This proactive approach ensures a smoother user journey, ultimately lowering ongoing support and maintenance expenditures.

Track support tickets, help desk inquiries, and maintenance costs before and after implementing design changes. Quantify the reduction in support costs and the positive impact on user experience.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Foster collaboration between design, development, and support teams. Share insights and learnings from user journey testing to ensure that everyone is aligned and can contribute to improving the user experience. This collaboration helps identify potential support and maintenance challenges early on and facilitates proactive problem-solving.

Some limitations, such as budgetary?constraints, time constraints, confidentiality, and so on, may prevent designers from conducting user journey tests with real users. Therefore it is critical for designers and teams to be aware of these potential issues and to seek out opportunities to incorporate real user testing wherever possible, as it helps greatly to the creation of a more effective and usable product.

1. The core problem while setting up of journeys is handling scenarios that a user can go through in the current context as well as in future. 2. If the journey arrests the user not to proceed further for want of vaild input which the user doesnt have at that moment then that a friction point and dis engagement with the journey starts.