Failure Branches Included
What happens when a step does not succeed.
User Flow Design
User Flow Design That Settles Sequence Before Screens Are Drawn
Screens designed before the sequence is agreed produce a set of pages that do not connect. User flow design settles that first: what happens in what order, where the decisions are, and what occurs on the branches — the failures, the reversals and the interruptions that otherwise get discovered in production.
We Map the Branches, Not Just the Path
The happy path is the easy part and it is usually the only part anyone maps.
Reversal Handled
Going back, which most flows treat as an exception.
Entry Points Mapped
People arrive mid-flow from links and emails.
Interruption Considered
Leaving and returning, on a different device.
Agreed Before Design
Because reordering a flow after screens exist is expensive.
User Flows, Explained
What Does a Flow Settle?
Four things, and settling them before design saves the most rework.
Discuss Your Flow →- 1
Order
What is asked when, which decides completion more than field count.
- 2
Decision Points
Where the path splits and on what basis.
- 3
Failure Handling
What happens when a step cannot complete.
- 4
Exit and Re-entry
Leaving partway and coming back.
What Flow Design Covers
The complete map, including everything that is not the happy path.
Once the flow is settled, wireframe design turns it into screens.
How We Design User Flows
Map the happy path, then spend most of the time on everything else.
Define the Outcome
What the flow is for, and what completing it means.
Map the Main Path
The sequence when everything works.
Map the Branches
Failures, reversals, interruptions and re-entry.
Question the Order
What is asked when, and whether it could be later.
Validate
Walked through with real cases before design begins.
Completeness
Why the Branches Are Most of the Work
The happy path is a straight line and takes an hour. Everything else takes the rest of the week.
What gets left out?
What happens when a payment fails, an email does not arrive, a code expires, a user closes the tab halfway, or the same person starts again on another device.
Each is common enough to occur daily at any real volume, and none is on the flow diagram, so each gets handled improvised at build time by whoever hits it first.
The result is inconsistent behaviour across a single flow — one failure returns to the start, another shows an error, a third silently loses everything.
Why does sequence matter more than length?
Because completion depends heavily on when something is asked rather than how much is asked in total.
Requesting personal details before showing whether the thing exists loses people who would happily have provided them afterwards. Same fields, different order, very different completion.
This is why the flow is settled before screens are drawn — reordering a sequence on a diagram costs minutes, and reordering it after eight screens exist costs a redesign.
Questions,answered.
User flow design maps the sequence, decision points and branches of a task before screens are designed — including failure paths, reversals, mid-flow entry and interruption.
Because screens designed before the sequence is agreed produce pages that do not connect, and reordering after they exist means redesigning them.
The branches — failed payments, expired links, closed tabs, resuming on another device. Each is common at real volume and none appears on a happy-path diagram, so each gets improvised at build time.
More than the number of them. The same fields in a different order can produce very different completion, which is why sequence is settled on a diagram rather than discovered in a build.
A flow settles sequence; wireframes settle what each screen contains and how it is prioritised. The flow comes first.
Still deciding if user flow design is right for you?
Talk to UsThe Diagram Had One Line
Flow diagrams get drawn as a sequence of boxes with arrows between them: start, step, step, step, done. It takes an hour and it describes what happens when nothing goes wrong.
Nothing goes wrong perhaps two-thirds of the time. The rest is a payment declining, a link expiring, a tab closing, someone resuming on their phone — none of which is on the diagram.
So each of those gets decided during implementation, by whoever encounters it, differently each time. The flow ends up with three inconsistent failure behaviours that nobody designed and nobody can explain.
Free Flow Review
Talk Through the Flow You Are Building
Tell us what the task is. We will map the sequence and the branches, including the ones that usually get discovered in production.
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