A journey map pays off once a flow crosses more than one system or more than one person. The Wells Fargo "User Journey Flow" follows one user from the Contact Us page through consent and authentication into either a chat or a phone call, with every branch and confirmation step drawn as its own node.
The branches are where the value is. Drawing them out, the Wells Fargo map surfaced five UX and technical dependencies you’d miss on the happy path: consent before sharing sensitive account data, biometric or password re-authentication, and an explicit confirmation before a chat disconnects. Sketch only the ideal case and none of those show up.
I consider a journey map finished when it shows:
- Every decision point where the user or the system branches, including the paths nobody intended.
- What happens when things go wrong: declined consent, dropped calls, abandoned sessions.
- Which steps belong to a different team or system, since friction tends to collect at those handoffs.