Every user will be in different states before, during or after using a solution like an application. During the process the user will reach multiple stages. A user can become a registered user for example and to get there multiple steps are required. Each step can be seen as a part of the user journey that a user has.

Between the different stages are decisions that a user makes and interactions that will start a response from the system. Therefore users will have multiple ways of reaching a certain state in a user journey map which is basically a visualisation of all stages that are possible and the connections between them.

The different actions between stages can be seen as user stories as they are the actions a user wants to and will take.