Guide to UX mapping methods

A user experience map documents the user’s needs, wants, thoughts, and feelings, possibly at the different stages of their experience depending on what type of user experience map it is. Creating UX maps is the bread and butter of experienced UX designers. There are five main types:

• Empathy maps capture what the user says, thinks, feels, and does to build a deeper emotional and cognitive understanding of their experience
• User journey maps visualize a specific user’s experience (including goals, pain points, and behaviors) across key touchpoints. Customer journey maps are a variant of user journey maps that focus specifically on the customer’s experience, which is important for products where the user and customer are different
• Service blueprints map the full service experience, linking the user’s actions to the systems and processes that support them behind the scenes
• Mental model diagrams outline the user’s expectations at each stage of an experience to align the design with how users think
• Value proposition maps define the product’s core benefits from the user’s perspective to guide messaging and experience design

While some may be quick to draw solutions based on assumptions of user problems, experienced UX designers advocate for conducting user research first, which often culminates in the creation of user experience maps. Let’s go through the steps for creating a UX map, starting with gathering data through research to create a user persona.

Editor’s note: This article was updated by Daniel Schwarz on 31 March 2025 to streamline the language, introduce clearer definitions for each UX mapping method, and provide a comparison table to help you quickly identify when and why to use each one. There is also a new section on recommended UX mapping tools.

Step 1: Craft a user persona

In order to construct a user experience map, we first need to understand the user’s persona. User personas are the foundation of UX research — their purpose is to understand the user on a foundational level. You’ll need to include the following attributes:

• Demographics — The user’s age, gender, occupation, income, education, location, technology, and other basic information (though this shouldn’t be the only or main focus of the persona)
• Goals and motivations — The user’s goals, motivations, frustrations, pain points, needs, and wants
• Behaviors — The user’s habits, hobbies, lifestyle choices, and personality traits

The primary method of collecting data for user personas is surveying (which is the cheapest option), but user interviews and focus groups are viable options too (more expensive, but more in-depth).

Step 2: Define the scope

Once we have a user persona, we need to decide what kind of user experience map we need. This depends on the scope of the project (i.e., is the goal to solve a user problem holistically, a singular user journey within a product, or a singular moment within a singular user journey?).

The different types of user experience maps

The most common user experience maps are empathy maps and user journey maps:

• Empathy map: An empathy map details what the user says, feels, thinks, and does. You can use this information for a user persona or by itself to help you connect with the user on a deeper level
  

• User journey map: This type of user experience map depicts the key touchpoints of a specific user journey, detailing the user’s goals, motivations, frustrations, pain points, needs, wants, and behaviours. A customer journey map depicts the same thing but from the perspective of the customer (that is, for B2B products where the customer and the user aren’t necessarily the same person)
  

Beyond those two main types of UX maps, you might also create and use:

• Service blueprint: This “user” experience map details the customer’s experience and connects it to the mapped-out product service infrastructure that supports the product experience. This map is more complex in nature but is often a necessity for products that achieve scale and have lots of moving parts. The fault lines can be more precisely detected using this user experience map because it maps the entire service, including the (potentially flawed) ‘backstage’ operations that users/customers aren’t even aware of
  
• Mental model diagram: A mental model diagram is a diagram of the user’s expectations at each step of a user task or journey. This diagram helps us to ensure that the user’s experience meets their expectations
  
• Value proposition maps: Why would the user use/buy the product? This document articulates and contextualizes the product’s benefits, which in turn helps us to say all the right things during the user’s experience

A comparison of the different types of user experience maps

Step 3: Collect data and empathize with the user’s unarticulated needs

At this point, we’ve created a user persona, narrowed down the project’s scope, and decided which UX maps we’ll need to create.

The next step is to leverage those data collection methods that I mentioned earlier (surveys, user interviews, and focus groups) in addition to app/web analytics, and then synthesize that data into insights. The app/web analytics are for mapping the various touchpoints of the user’s/customer’s journey — remember, we need contextual insight into every part of the experience if we are to improve it (and know which parts to improve).

All in all, the objective of this step is to document the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of users and/or customers at every touchpoint of their journey.

However, we humans are complex beings and sometimes the findings may be contradictory in nature. When this happens, let these contradictions exist and allow the resulting data to breathe life into additional maps (or additional flows within a singular map) representing additional user/customer segments.

Here are some questions you can ask participants at various stages of their user/customer journey:

• What is your overall goal?
• What is your goal at this step?
• Why take this step, or approach?
• What motivates you at this step?
• What actions do you take to accomplish your goal at this step?
• What do you think of this step?
• How do you feel about this step?
• How well does this step meet your needs/wants? (“on a scale of…”)
• Tell me about any pain points or frustrations
• Now the opposite — what do you like/love about this step?

Don’t forget to refer to your user personas — are certain segments of people saying or doing the same thing? What patterns are you seeing? Utilize those app/web analytics too — for example, how long does it take for users/customers to make it through each touchpoint? That information is in your analytics data, and can be displayed on your user experience maps.

Step 4: Create a robust map with an informed mindset

Regardless of the type of user experience map we’re creating, there are some considerations to keep in mind:

Per the Nielsen Norman Group, the first consideration is whether we’re designing for the present or for the future. If we’re designing for the present, then we simply identify the state of affairs today and outline our map based on existing pain points and other insights. However, if we’re mapping for the future, then we propose a future state that we would like our product or service to be in.

The second consideration is the richness of the data we have. Do we have enough data on the user/customer/problem we’re trying to solve? If there is sufficient data, then we can build a high-fidelity map with concrete, map-centric data. Until then, we must investigate and iterate until we have enough data to create a user experience map that truly represents our users, customers, product, and business.

The third consideration is the level of detail that we’re aiming for. Low-fidelity maps are rough overviews of the problems, perhaps consisting of notes in an unrefined manner, and are most commonly used in a collaborative setting. However, high-fidelity maps are the preferred outputs when designing/refining “final” solutions. High-fidelity maps have detailed user/customer journey data and can be multi-dimensional.

The following is a mid-fidelity example of a user journey map depicting a ride to the airport:

Best user experience mapping tools

To create user experience maps, you’ll want a collaborative whiteboard tool. This’ll enable you to create UX maps in whatever format you prefer. After all, UX maps aren’t user-facing — they’re purely for you and your teammates, to provide insights and context, and ultimately help you make good UX decisions.

If you just want to put the data into tables, a whiteboard tool can facilitate exactly that. However, if you’d prefer to create elaborate customer/user flows, a whiteboard tool can facilitate that too.

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According to the 2023 Design Tools Survey, the best user experience mapping tools (i.e., digital whiteboarding tools) ordered by rating are:

• Milanote
• Lucidspark
• Canva
• FigJam
• Whimsical
• Miro

Summary

To create a great user experience map, we have to ask, listen, empathize, research, and challenge assumptions. We can gather user/customer data to constantly iterate and refine our maps. If we do this successfully, the map can proudly live as a design artifact for all stakeholders to utilize, ready for driving smart design decisions.

Header image source: Flaticon

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