How To Elevate Your Product Experience With User Flows

From identifying user pain points to improving communication with stakeholders, User Flows show Product Managers how people actually use their product in the context of their goals and intentions.

Imagine putting yourself in your user's shoes and going through each phase of their experience with your product. Wouldn't it be great to understand what they are facing and devise different and better solutions? This is not just an empathy exercise, but a strategic journey mapped out through user flows.

This is what user flows are: a guide that maps out an unknown path. They allow you to predict challenges, anticipate needs and smooth the way, ensuring that each step forward in the product is intuitive and engaging.

As a Product Manager, Do I Really Need User Flows?

One of the main aspects of this role is that you are responsible for ensuring that what is built is valuable and viable. To do this, you will need to make informed decisions.

User flows allow you to visualize the journey a user takes to accomplish tasks within the product. This visualization helps in understanding how users interact with the product, identifying their needs, preferences, and the obstacles they face.

You can pinpoint areas where the design can be improved: 

• Identifying points where users might get stuck,

• Opportunities to enhance the user experience,

• And ways to simplify interactions.

The goal is to create a more intuitive and efficient path for users to achieve their objectives.

Strategically, these flows help PMs to identify key features that need to be developed or refined. Ensuring that new features align with the user's needs and contribute to a better user experience.

Additionally, they work like a charm with stakeholders!

• A “tangible illustration” (even in the virtual world) helps stakeholders to quickly understand user behaviors and the product's functional flow without delving into technical details. 😮‍💨 Let's say that visual aids like this is like a universal language that transcends departmental boundaries.

• PMs and designers can set and align expectations with stakeholders by presenting user flows early in the development process. Allowing them to see what to expect in the final product and make informed decisions on the scope and priorities of features.

• Stakeholders can easily identify areas that may need revision or suggest improvements. It provides a basis for discussing resource allocation, timelines and project feasibility, which contributes to strategic decision making.

Who Creates User Flows?

This is a collaborative effort, mostly done by PMs working with UX designers. Actually, developing user flows requires cross-collaboration between various teams, including UX/UI designers, developers, and marketers for example.

Considering different perspectives makes the product development more interesting.

The inclusion of such diverse perspectives enriches the product development process, fostering a comprehensive understanding of user needs and the broader strategic objectives.👇

👨🏻‍💻 Product Manager’s Point of View:

Their role is to deeply understand the challenges and problems the team needs to address. Furthermore, through managing stakeholders, they must assess whether the user behavior change they're aiming for is feasible.

👨‍🔬 UX Designer’s Point of View:

They focus on the actual navigation experience, ensuring the user can move from point A to point B logically and effectively within the product’s interfaces and interactions. The ultimate question they address is, "We've built this product—so how do we ensure users get the maximum value from it?"

How to Read User Flows?

In fact, they use the same components as flowcharts. I remember using many of these diagrams to solve specific problems and printing the result. Visually, they are the representation of the path a user follows through a digital product, from the point of entry through a series of steps to a successful outcome or conversion.

🟣 Ovals or Ellipses: Represent the start and end points of a process.

🟧 Rectangles: These are actions or tasks that the user will perform, such as inputting information or clicking a button.

🔷 Diamonds: Indicate decision points where the user must make a choice, leading to different branches of the flow depending on the decision made.

↪️ Arrows: Show the direction of the flow from one step to the next, guiding how the user moves through the scenario.

How Can I Start Creating a User Flow?

Before jumping into the steps, I said that this is a collaborative process between UX and PM, ideally. But this ideal situation is not always possible, because there are still companies that:

a) Lacks a UX/UI Design department

b) Has a UX/UI Design department, but they focus more on designing screens (UI) than doing research and experimentation (UX).

Of course, this is more difficult. But not impossible!

What I would recommend here is you can arrange a call with engineers who have already tested the product. QA engineers should be very familiar with the current state of the product. So ask them to walk you through this experience and learn from the struggles they already know.

It's also good to familiarize yourself with your product. Set aside some time to test it and understand how to get from point A to B.

Either way, you can create these flows with the same steps, just adapt it to your situation:

1️⃣ Define Purpose

• Start by asking, who is the primary user of this flow? It’s important that you have identified a detailed persona that includes demographic details, motivations, goals, and pain points.

• Second, what is the user's goal? How does success looks like for this user? What are they trying to achieve? This could range from completing a purchase, finding information, or signing up for a service.

• Establish clear, measurable objectives for the flow. For example, reducing the number of steps to checkout, increasing sign-up rates, or improving navigation to key information.

2️⃣ Map Out the Flow

• Establish where the journey starts. This could be a homepage, a landing page from an ad, or a link shared on social media.

• Outline the steps it takes to complete a specific goal, including actions and decisions.

• Illustrate points where the user must make a choice and show where those choices lead.

3️⃣ Add Details

• Provide a brief description for each step, what the user is doing, and what they expect to happen next (outcome).

• Anticipate places where errors may occur (e.g., form submission issues) and outline how these are handled within the flow.

• Ensure that the symbols, lines, and text used in the user flow are consistent throughout, making it easy for stakeholders to follow.

4️⃣ Get Feedback

• Share the draft with team members from different departments and consider incorporating their feedback to cover all perspectives, if it adds value.

• If possible, test the flow with actual users fitting the persona defined. Observe where they succeed, where they struggle, and gather qualitative feedback.

5️⃣ Iterate and Improve

• Use data from user interactions with the flow, along with direct feedback and look for areas to improve.

• After adjusting the flow to the needs and expectations of the users, it is time to monitor the post-implementation phase. This helps to detect any problems at an early stage and provides feedback for further refinement.

⭐️ User Flow Example

Well, the time has come to review an example. For this, I will use a very simple flow from my newsletter.

Version 1: Easiest newsletter subscriber happy path

The following illustration represents the easiest path for someone to subscribe to my newsletter.

Upon submission, the user might receive an immediate on-screen confirmation message, thanking them for subscribing. Alternatively, or in addition, they would receive a confirmation email that might require them to click a link to verify their subscription.

Version 2: A more realistic conversion flow

In this second image, what I am communicating is that beyond that happy path, there may be platform issues that lead the user down a path where they decide to abandon the whole process.

Suppose I have to show this to marketing managers. So in this version I emphasize lead conversion and missed opportunities.

Version 3: Adding marketing channels in the flow

And let's just say that after reviewing it with Marketing, they were quite interested in seeing how those leads came in or landed in the newsletter. Where do they come from?

A deeper level in this flow will help ensure that the transition from the marketing channel to the subscription flow is seamless and that there is a clear connection in messaging and design.

In addition, it is essential to perform usability testing because, even with data analytics, there is much value in observing actual users as they navigate the flow. This could uncover unexpected obstacles or opportunities for improvement.

Wrapping Up

It's clear that understanding and creating effective user flows is more than an exercise in empathy—it's a strategic necessity. Putting yourself into your user’s shoes and mapping out their journey, you unlock insights that lead to a more intuitive and engaging product experience.

Product managers play a crucial role in here, by translating user needs and challenges into actionable insights that guide the development of valuable and viable product features.

Don’t forget that this helps to align with stakeholders as well! Stakeholders can easily identify areas that may need revision or suggest improvements. Allowing them to see what to expect in the final product and make informed decisions on the scope and priorities of features.

That’s all for now, I hope you had enjoyed this issue. Don’t forget to leave a comment with your experiences and suggestions or drop some feedback. See ya!

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