Using User Journey to map emotional oscillations during CoVID-19 social distancing

Abstract

The CoVid-19 pandemic has demanded society to social distance, which significantly affected not only people's routine but also and their mental health. The way each person is facing this period of confinement is shaped according to their principles, culture, health, and financial stability, thus leading individuals to react emotionally in different ways. Through Design, it is possible to map these experiences and represent them through User Journeys, allowing clear representations of how the experience took place when facing the fear of contagion, the sudden change of routine, and isolation. This study focuses on discussing the effectiveness of unifying different experiences in a single representation, mainly to outline emotional aspects. Trying to balance all emotional variations in a single User Journey prevents the researcher from seeing important details of the users' experience. In this study, the need to use individual User Journeys was evidenced when it is intended to analyse the emotional aspects of users when dealing with products or services, as individuality can shed light on aspects not observable in a consolidated analysis. © 2021 Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos. All rights reserved.