A journey map is a research-based visualization of a customer's actions over time to accomplish a particular goal. While employed to detail a user's most important touch points and, thus, define screens to be designed, journey maps are also a great way to educate stakeholders about what customers perceive when interacting with your product.
Journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user actions into a timeline. With this as a baseline, most journey maps include corresponding actions, thoughts, and emotions at the top, with opportunities, pain points, and solutions at the bottom.
Center your journey map around a specific persona, and once completed, consider grouping your steps into phases.
Actions are the actual behaviors taken by your users. Thoughts, meanwhile, ideally capture verbatim the questions and motivations of your users at each step. Emotions - for example: delighted, satisfied, frustrated - track how your user feels.
Opportunities document how to optimize your user experience. Adding pain points to your journey map will identify where your customer is experiencing negative emotions. And finally, solutions are where you and your team brainstorm ways to improve your user experience.