Journey Map

Strategy & Research

Dave positioned itself as a mission-driven company. Leadership asked us to build a customer journey map to actually understand the people behind that mission and design around them more deliberately. Early into the research, the real problem surfaced: most internal stakeholders couldn't empathize with what Dave's customers were navigating — a serious gap for a product built for people who are most financially at risk.

Over several months, I partnered with a senior researcher and senior designer on conversations with 22 customers across a range of financial backgrounds. A clear pattern emerged: people felt trapped in a loop — borrow, spend, get paid, repay, land right back where they started — while actively wanting out of it. We built the synthesis around a subway-map metaphor: two people standing at the same stop could have boarded from completely different starting points, and were likely headed toward different ones too. That let us map two distinct customer backgrounds onto the same loop, and the different paths beyond it. Rather than spotlight individual stories, we blended the research into two composite characters and narrated their journeys end to end, using real recorded customer voices throughout.

Presented as an interactive, narrated map at a company all-hands, it gave leadership clear direction on where to invest in the product — and built genuine empathy across the org for what customers were actually living through.

Capabilities

UX Research
Customer Journey Mapping
Qualitative Interviews
Narrative Design
Stakeholder Empathy Building
Interactive Presentation Design
Audio & Multimedia Integration

Collaboration

Senior researcherresearch partnership throughout 22 customer conversations and synthesis
Senior designerdesign partnership on synthesis, visual metaphor development, and final presentation
22 customersacross a range of financial backgrounds and life situations
Dave leadership & full companypresented at an all-hands

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