An Evaluation Guide and Decision Support Tool for Journey Maps in Healthcare and Beyond

The journey map concept evolved out of the service design field and is still relatively new in the healthcare landscape [1]. Journey maps are visualizations that effectively highlight organizational issues and allow stakeholder groups to be depicted by interest or function for a comparative visual analysis [2]. There are five journey map approaches: 1) Mental (Cognitive) Model Map, 2) Customer Journey Map, 3) Experience Map, 4) Service Blueprint Map, 5) Spatial Map. The objective of this article is three-fold: 1) quantify and delineate the journey mapping visualization techniques utilized from the phase 1 scoping review [2], 2) create a Journey Map Evaluation Guide, 3) create a Journey Map Decision Support Tool to facilitate a standardized method for journey map selection. For those less familiar with journey mapping, this framework can serve as a decision-making tool to facilitate the most effective choice among the different journey mapping visualization approaches. The tools presented in this study can provide a mechanism to standardize the assessment, classification and utilization of journey maps in the healthcare sector and industries abound.