A bridge between UX design and enterprise architecture

Abstract

Digital systems have become popular channels to facilitate interactions between multi service providers (MSP’s) and customers. As these systems enable customers to use services that the MSP offers, MSP’s aim for a high user experience of their digital systems. This results into UX designers and enterprise architects collaborating to improve the user experience, using user journey maps as a means to communicate. Though, user journeys are created in many different ways, with different taxonomies. Additionally, the two type of experts are quite different in terms of background and knowledge. As result, user journey maps can be interpreted in different ways and collaborating through user journey maps can become a time-consuming process.

In attempt to align UX designers with enterprise architects and to structure user journeys, this study proposes an extension to Archimate that is focused on the integration with user journeys. The extension, User Journey Extended Archimate (UJEA) is based on a literature review, a case study at a Dutch bank and an expert interview with a customer journey software vendor. UJEA consists of a user journey taxonomy (i), a user journey meta model (ii), a mapping of concepts (iii), a meta model that combines user journeys with Archimate (iv), a graphical notation (v), a new Archimate framework (vi) and a meta model with the allowed relationships between the user journey layer and architecture (vii).

The artefact has been evaluated through technical action research at a Dutch bank, in which two UX designers and three architects applied the artefact on a real case. With this evaluation, we measured the perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, intention to use, perceived collaboration value, perceived familiarity of concepts and perceived completeness. The evaluation session showed that artefact has great potency in mapping user journeys and aligning UX designers with architects. The results were positive; subjects found it useful, easy to use, intent to use it, saw great potency in terms of collaboration and recognised the concepts. Still, the artefact can be improved by adjusting the allowed links between user journeys and architecture, integrating the artefact with screen designs and adding a couple of extra concepts.

While further validation on the artefact and artefact improvements are recommended for future research, UJEA provides a solid basis for creating user journey maps and integration with enterprise architecture. The strength of the framework lies within the discussions that arise when UX designers and architects link a user journey map to architecture. We hypothesise that the extension is suitable as a universal standard for user journey maps, as well as a means for overview and communication for UX designers and architects.