User journey maps visualize the complete emotional experience of users interacting with your product over time, including their thoughts, feelings, and broader life context. User flows show the multiple paths one user can take to complete goals within your product, accounting for different decision points and user types. Task flows outline the ideal, linear sequence of steps to accomplish a single task. Each tool serves a distinct purpose in UX discovery — journey maps for empathy and context, user flows for designing multiple pathways, and task flows for establishing sequential foundations.
In This Article:
- What Are Task Flows and When Should You Use Them?
- How Do User Flows Help You Design for Different User Types?
- Why Are User Journey Maps Essential for Understanding Context?
- Choosing the Right Discovery Tool for Your EdTech Product
- Key Takeaways: Selecting Discovery Tools That Match Your Goals
- Frequently Asked Questions About User Flows and Journey Maps
- Ready to gain deeper insightsthrough strategic discovery work?
When product leaders begin a partnership with an outside UX team, the discovery process presents a unique challenge. All stakeholders must gain alignment about the product problem to solve and come to a shared understanding about your users. And in order to understand your users, you need to consider their flows.
Task flows, user flows, and user journey maps can all be useful in the UX discovery phase. All of these tools share a sense of establishing and tracking user movement. But they are discrete tools that have specific purposes and appropriate uses.
You should know what outcomes each of these three tools provide, how they overlap, and how they support each other. That way, you’ll know where your efforts will be best applied in our discovery work together.
What Are Task Flows and When Should You Use Them?
A task flow is a visualization of specific steps undertaken to accomplish a goal in your product. Task flows are typically:
- Linear. Task flows generally represent a direct, predictable, ideal way a user would accomplish a goal in your product.
- Sequential. Task flows are a series of steps to take a user from beginning to end of a goal.
- Simple. Task flows tend to be straightforward and do not branch out with options or decision points.
Task flows are useful for ensuring that you’re designing sequentially and thoroughly. Task flows serve a purpose — a picture of ideal user choices.
But task flows have their limits. They’re static and reflect the thought process of the individual creating them. And task flows assume users all behave the same way. While these are serious drawbacks, task flows do serve as necessary precursors for designing more complex user flows.
How Do User Flows Help You Design for Different User Types?
Task flows focus on steps to achieve one goal, and user flows focus on one user’s interaction with your product. Many task flows can make up one user flow. User flows reflect:
- One user’s real decision points and actions. Users have different ways of interacting with your product. Each user’s specific needs, wants, and choices can be illustrated in a user flow.
- Multiple ways to enter and exit the flow. User flows document the way a user begins and ends their engagement with your product.
- More complexity and nuance. User flows account for and honor user choice. They can help designers spot and eliminate “dead ends” — where users get lost in your product design.
It’s extremely valuable to create user flows to represent various user stories in discovery sessions. That way you can ensure you’re designing multiple pathways that work for different kinds of users interacting with your product.
What Questions Should Drive Your User Flow Research?
In order to build a strong user flow, you should ask:
- What is the user’s goal?
- What information does the user need to be able to complete that goal?
- What dead ends will the user run into that keep them from accomplishing the goal?
Our UX research team can provide answers to these questions. Qualitative research, particularly personal interviews and observation, helps you:
- Understand users’ mental models. What processes are intuitive to them?
- Observe obstacles they encounter while using your product. What product interactions cause friction for them? Where does their behavior diverge from what was expected?
It’s critical to visualize the various ways in which users interact with your product in user flows. All stakeholders can then see, agree, and prioritize user needs.
Why Are User Journey Maps Essential for Understanding Context?
User journey maps consider even more than task flows and user flows. Yes, journey maps illustrate the steps users take and the decisions they make. But they also incorporate user thoughts, feelings, and a fuller context of their lives in a narrative form.
In short, user journey maps:
- Allow you to intimately understand a user’s standpoint
- Know and empathize with their thoughts and feelings
- Consider what happened in a user’s life before and after engagement with your product
- Understand the ecosystem of other tools that work alongside your product
- Identify opportunities where your product can solve pain points
When you map many users’ journeys with your product, you may want to synthesize it into one user journey map. Or, perhaps your product would benefit from multiple maps. For example, instructors who teach small classes will have particular pain points and experiences. Instructors who teach to auditoriums full of students will have entirely different experiences.
User journey maps are incredibly valuable and highly flexible. Our UX researchers can create a smaller, more focused journey map (like how an instructor assigns and assesses a final exam). Or it may be more appropriate to map out an instructor’s overall journey through an entire semester. Either map can yield the instructor insights you most need.
How Should UX Research Inform Your Journey Maps?
Journey maps, like user flows, should be informed by UX research. Focus group conversation can provide honest, direct feedback from a number of participants at the same time. Surveys, when carefully written and structured, are another way to understand user needs and your product’s usability.
In the discovery phase, user journey maps prevent any fragmented understanding amongst stakeholders. It’s everyone’s responsibility to look at the entire user experience and arrive at a shared vision.
Choosing the Right Discovery Tool for Your EdTech Product
Task flows, user flows, and user journey maps can all play a role in the discovery phase. The right combination depends on your product complexity, timeline, and the specific questions you need to answer about your users.
Task flows, user flows, and user journey maps can all play a role in the discovery phase. The right combination depends on your product complexity, timeline, and the specific questions you need to answer about your users.
If you need to establish basic sequential flow for a new feature: Use a task flow. It provides a clear, ideal pathway without complexity — perfect for defining the “happy path” before adding nuance.
If you’re designing for multiple user types with different goals: Use user flows. They reveal how different users navigate the same features, helping you accommodate diverse needs and prevent dead ends.
If you need to understand emotional journey and broader context: Use journey maps. They capture feelings, motivations, and ecosystem factors that explain why users behave the way they do.
If you’re working with limited time or budget constraints: Combine task flows and user flows. This covers essential pathways without requiring the extensive research that comprehensive journey mapping demands.
If you’re planning a major product overhaul or launching a new product: Use all three tools. Comprehensive discovery ensures you understand your users from every angle before committing significant development resources.
When we conclude our discovery with you, we’ll have clear alignment about the challenges we are trying to solve. We’ll know how to focus our combined efforts. And most importantly, we will have a deeper shared understanding of your users and their current needs.
Key Takeaways: Selecting Discovery Tools That Match Your Goals
- Task flows establish ideal sequential foundations and work best for straightforward, linear processes where you need to define the “happy path”
- User flows reveal multiple pathways and decision points, essential for designing products that accommodate different user types and scenarios
- User journey maps provide comprehensive emotional and contextual understanding, identifying pain points throughout the entire user experience
- Research methods like interviews, surveys, and observation should inform all three approaches for maximum effectiveness
- The right combination depends on your product stage, complexity, and the specific insights your team needs to move forward confidently
Frequently Asked Questions About User Flows and Journey Maps
What’s the main difference between a task flow and a user flow?
A task flow shows the ideal, linear sequence for completing one specific task — it’s the “happy path” with no branching or options. A user flow, on the other hand, shows the multiple paths one user might take, including decision points, alternative routes, and potential dead ends. Think of a task flow as the recipe, while a user flow is the actual cooking experience where someone might skip steps, substitute ingredients, or take detours.
Do I need to create all three types of flows for my EdTech product discovery?
Not necessarily. The tools you need depend on your product stage and discovery goals. If you’re designing a straightforward new feature, task flows might be sufficient. If you’re addressing usability issues across different user types, user flows become essential. If you’re trying to understand why users aren’t adopting your product despite good functionality, journey maps reveal the emotional and contextual factors at play. Through 40,000+ hours of EdTech user research, we’ve learned to recommend the right combination based on your specific challenges and constraints.
How long does it take to create a comprehensive user journey map?
Journey mapping timelines vary significantly based on scope and complexity. Through our free initial consultation, we’ll help you understand what timeline makes sense for your specific needs and goals.
Can user journey maps be used for products that aren’t live yet?
Absolutely. Journey maps can be incredibly valuable for new product development. Instead of mapping current product interactions, you map the user’s current process — how they accomplish their goals today without your product. This reveals pain points your product could solve, workflows it needs to fit into, and emotional highs and lows that create opportunities. Some of our most impactful journey maps have been for products still in the concept phase, helping teams understand the problem space before designing solutions.
What research methods work best for informing user flows and journey maps?
Qualitative methods like user interviews and observation provide the richest insights for flows and journey maps. Watching users navigate your product (or their current process) reveals actual behavior, not just what they say they do. Interviews help you understand the “why” behind their choices and the emotions they experience. Surveys can validate findings at scale once you’ve identified key patterns. The most effective approach combines multiple methods — typically 5-10 in-depth interviews per user type, supplemented by observational research and validated through broader surveys when needed.
How do you know when you need an outside UX partner versus creating these internally?
Consider an outside partner when you’re facing complex multi-stakeholder products (students, instructors, administrators), need objective perspective on accumulated design debt, lack dedicated UX research capacity, or require specialized EdTech domain expertise. Internal teams excel when they have strong UX capabilities, deep product knowledge, and stakeholders trust their recommendations. Often the best approach is hybrid — external partners for discovery and strategic direction, internal teams for ongoing iteration. If you’re questioning whether your team has the capacity or expertise, that’s usually a signal that partnering could accelerate your success.
Ready to gain deeper insights into your EdTech users through strategic discovery work?
Schedule a free consultation to discuss which combination of user flows, journey maps, and research methods will best serve your product goals.
Want to go deeper? Download our comprehensive guide: User Flows, Journey Maps, and the Discovery Phase for detailed best practices, templates, and case studies from our EdTech discovery work.
