Journey maps are an extremely valuable tool and they are particularly effective at helping a broader team understand something of the bigger picture beyond the current narrow focus of the product release, feature, or UI screen.
But there is a challenge of being sure that you are capturing the right journey of the right person. In a healthcare context, the journey of a patient is very different than that of the doctor, which is different than that of the nurse or therapist.
For example in cancer treatment a patient may have a doctor visit, radiation therapy and a chemotherapy appointment all on the same day – all on the one trip to the hospital. Products to improve that journey might help the patient find their way around, or notify their next appointment of their current location or that they are running late. But the radiation therapist has a completely different journey.
Another important element concerns what you are mapping. In mapping healthcare journeys one might focus on all the different touchpoint (people and technology) and how a patient and their carer might journey through them – and at what timescale.
In other contexts (including healthcare) one might be less focussed on the touchpoint with the system than with the persons emotional state at each moment in the journey.
Both of these touch on the nature of the user experience and they can, of course, be overlaid, but a journey map (like any map) is a deliberate abstraction and therefore, what matters most is knowing what it will be used for.
