The Curves Have to Cross

The Curves Have to Cross

Produce ONE image, 16:9 landscape: a multi-persona journey map. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.

First — do you have the fields?

If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.

Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.

The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.

If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.

Fields — replace these six lines only

• The project, and the research question: {a title, and a question}
• The six stages, each with two activities: {six}
• The personas: {two to four, each with a short description}
• Where the curves diverge, and why: {the stage, and the reason}
• The quotes, by stage: {supplied quotes, or none}
• Feeling and thinking, per stage: {two short lines each}

The divergence law

This is the only reason the map carries more than one line.

The curves must cross, or separate sharply, at least once — and the fields say where and why. Different people meet the same process differently: the stage that relieves one person is the stage that loses another, and finding that moment is the entire purpose of drawing several personas at all.

A reference run of this style produced a genuinely professional map whose three curves ran parallel for the whole journey — one above, one in the middle, one below, rising and falling together at every stage, never touching. You could delete two of them and lose nothing. Three personas were named, described and given portraits, and then given the same experience at three heights.

Trace the finished curves left to right. If they never cross and never part, the map has one persona in three colours.

At the divergence, the curves should be visibly far apart — one near a peak while another is near a trough — not merely a slightly wider gap.

The curves

• One smooth line per persona, in that persona's colour, of even weight.
• No axis, no scale, no gridlines, no data points. Peaks mean trust, ease, relief; troughs mean confusion, waiting, risk, doubt.
• They may cross, diverge, converge and run briefly together.
• Dashed tails at the right end where the journey continues past the frame.
• One line at the foot stating that the curves are qualitative and describe relative experience, not measurement.

The stage axis

Six numbered stages across the top, each with a short title, a one-line description, and two small activity boxes beneath in pale grey with thin outlines, naming concrete actions. Thin vertical rules carry the stage divisions down through the curve area.

The persona legend

At the left: each persona as a coloured dot or small portrait, a name, and two lines of description — what they bring and what they care about. Their colour is used for nothing else on the page.

Quotes

Small, dark grey, in quotation marks, placed at peaks, troughs and turning points, joined to the curve by a thin dashed leader. One to three per stage. Never speech bubbles.

Quotes come from the fields. If none were supplied, leave them off. Writing plausible user quotes into a research artefact is writing research nobody did.

Feeling and thinking

Two horizontal strips beneath the curves, divided by the same stage columns:

• Feeling — two or three short phrases, what people experience.
• Thinking — two or three short questions, in the user's own voice.

Every stage gets its own text, and no two stages repeat. These strips exist to show the experience changing along the journey; the same words under all six columns say the journey does not change, which contradicts the curves directly above them. If the fields only give a general pair, that is a fault in the fields — go back and write one per stage.

Each strip has a small label and icon at its left end.

Style

White ground, thin grey rules, dark grey type. Persona colours low-saturation and clearly distinguishable. Dense but orderly, with consistent alignment down the stage columns. No cards, no shadows, no dashboards, no gradients, no illustration beyond the small icons.

Nothing invented

Stages, personas, quotes and layer text come from the fields. No statistics, percentages, sample sizes, satisfaction scores or named organisations. A map like this is read as fieldwork.

Never

• ✕ curves that never cross or separate
• ✕ the same feeling or thinking text repeated under more than one stage
• ✕ an axis, scale, gridline or plotted data point
• ✕ quotes the fields did not supply
• ✕ statistics, scores, sample sizes or named organisations
• ✕ two personas who would feel the same at every stage
• ✕ cards, shadows, gradients or dashboard styling

The result

A map that earns its second and third line: six stages everyone passes through, and one moment where they stop having the same experience — drawn clearly enough that the moment is the first thing you notice.