Journey Maps, the Inspectah Deck of Flow Diagrams
or All Journey Maps are Flow Diagrams just as All Squares are Rectangles not vice versa.
They are elaborate, powerful, beautiful chaos, but not all flow diagrams are judged by their subset, the Customer Journey, just as all Wu-tang Clan music isn’t judged by the Inspectah Deck catalogue, or the missing first album (we won’t go there).
Though just like journey maps and flow diagrams, you can’t talk about the Wu-tang without talking about the rebel INS (Inspectah Deck) . Arguably the most talented and multifaceted emcee, though not the Leader,(RZA), the loudest or swaggiest (ODB, and Meth), or the most lyrically dense (GZA), when you hear Deck, you just know you’re hearing Wu-tang, just like the how you can’t help but see a flow diagram when viewing a customer journey.
But in a vacuum, like on Czarface, without knowing the history of the WU you can still love and appreciate the knowledge that you get from Inspectah Deck, similarly to how you can have no clue about flow diagrams and still garner knowledge from one of its best examples, the customer journey.
Ok on a more basic level its just like how all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, but only squares would have rather had that explanation.
What is a Flow Diagram?
Simply put a flow diagram is a visualization of how something goes from point A to point B through a system. As discussed in my last post, Journey Maps are specifically a customers journey through a system,
The Simplest flow diagram is an electrical current to light a light.
A circuit flow diagram showing a 1 switch circuit. Open circuit on the left, closed circuit on the right.
What is a Journey Map?
Journey Maps deal with the journey, emotions, pain points, and motivations of the customer. Your map is a visualization of the step by step experience the user goes through.
Differences:
Flow diagram is about the physical steps through the process no perspective, Journey map contains a flow diagram, from the customers perspective, about emotion and feeling,
Flow diagram is steps, decision, and outcome, Journey map can have other information on the chart
In Conclusion, a Flow Diagram is just a diagram, or visual representation of a process, so yes ALL Journey Maps contain a Flow Diagram at the root, but they are not the same and therefore not interchangeable.
3 More similarities between a Customer Journey Map & Inspectah Deck
1. Deck was the first rapper to drop a Verse on a Wu-tang single, the first rapper on Protect Ya Neck, just as Customer Journey Map’s are usually a first intro into Flow Diagrams
2. Immediately both tell you exactly what they are doing and give you all the knowledge to react.
I smoke on the mic like "Smokin' Joe" Frazier
The hell raiser, raisin' hell with the flavor
Terrorize the jam like troops in Pakistan
Swingin' through your town like your neighborhood Spiderman
(see image on left)
3. You may not specifically know what or who they are but you know that you have encountered them before and they left an impact on you.
I bomb atomically, Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses
Can't define how I be droppin' these mockeries
Lyrically perform armed robbery
Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me
Battle-scarred Shogun, explosion when my pen hits tremendous
Ultra-violet shine blind forensics
I inspect view through the future see millennium
Killa Beez sold fifty gold, sixty platinum
Image Source: NN/group
So what do you think? What tool could we compare to ODB?