UX Glossary · U
User flow
The path a person takes through a product to complete a goal, mapped step by step.
A user flow maps the route someone takes to achieve a goal: the screens, the decisions, the branches. It is drawn from the user’s perspective and organised around their objective rather than around the system’s structure.
Flow, flowchart, clickstream
Three related things worth separating. A user flow is the intended path, designed. A flowchart shows process logic including system branches a user never sees. A clickstream is the actual path, measured after the fact.
Comparing the first and third is where the value is. The gap between the flow you designed and the paths people take is usually the most informative thing in an analytics account.
What drawing one forces
Naming every branch. It is easy to design the path where everything works and never decide what happens when the payment is declined, the session expires, the item goes out of stock mid-checkout, or the user arrives from a link halfway through.
Those branches are where products lose people, and they only get designed if something makes them visible.
In practice
Draw the flow before the screens. Screens designed first tend to produce a flow assembled afterwards from whatever exists, which is how products end up with three ways to reach the same place and none to get back.