What a user journey captures
You have scattered notes about how people find and use your product.
Some describe weeks of hesitation across a website, an email thread and a phone call.
Others describe a single screen where people get stuck.
Both feel important, and you cannot tell which one deserves a map first.
The distinction is scope.
A user journey captures a high-level goal pursued across channels and over time.
A user flow captures one discrete task inside a product, usually finished in minutes or hours.
Picking the wrong scope means your map answers a question nobody asked.
This guide offers a scope-based choice, recommended research methods and a check for your notes before you draw.
A user journey, sometimes called a customer journey, is a scenario-based sequence of steps a person takes to accomplish a high-level goal.
It usually spans multiple channels and unfolds over time.
The definition comes from UX research firm Nielsen Norman Group, which describes journeys as holistic and high-level experiences (nngroup.com).
Their documented example is a new-patient journey.
Finding a new doctor touches many points over days, weeks or months: researching the practice's website, calling to schedule, and receiving emails.
It also includes visiting the office, using a patient portal, and following up by phone if needed.
No single screen contains that experience.
Because the journey is complex, NN/g notes that contextualizing these actions with users' emotions and thoughts can be useful for analyzing and optimizing the experience.
Journey maps are the common artifact for visualizing journeys.
Journey maps are narrative and descriptive rather than just a list of steps.
They tell a user-centered story, capturing actions, thoughts and feelings over time and across channels.
What a user flow captures
A user flow is a set of interactions describing the typical or ideal steps needed to accomplish a common task performed with a product.
The goal is much more granular than a journey goal, and the focus narrows to a specific objective within one product (nngroup.com).