They walked our grocery checkout as if they had never seen the shop. The report named the exact screen where people set the bag down and left. We had been arguing about the payment brands instead.
The mapping day felt slow at first. We wanted to skip to recommendations. By three o’clock the wall showed that “sign in” was four screens, not one, and the argument in our stand-up finally had an object.
I wish we had booked the audit before the festival campaign, not after. The health check was still useful — it caught a banner that covered the next button on smaller phones — but the deposit rules meant we could not pull the earlier date we had cancelled. That was on us.
Mei Lin asked our support lead to attempt a claim as if the policy number were lost. We had never done that in the room. The path review for the April release was shorter than the audit and still stopped a new confirmation screen from shipping with the old back-button label.
Longer account: the claim that looped
An insurer in George Town asked us to audit “file a claim.” On the wall, the path looked like a straight line. In observed sessions, three of eight people returned to the policy list after the photo step because the next screen used the word “case” instead of “claim.” The written audit did not propose a redesign. It asked the team to pick one word and keep it from the home screen to the SMS. They did. The follow-up health check, one season later, showed the loop had thinned. Two people still paused at the photo permission; that pause had been in the first map and was not a surprise.
If your path needs a first walk, request an audit.