Hello everyone, I am designer l1m0. This article is about user experience maps in UX design.
For novice designers, building a user experience map can be a bit of a challenge. In this article, I will share how UX designers make user experience maps in simple and understandable language, hoping to help you improve your daily project experience.
01 What is a user experience map
The user experience map is a graph that visually represents users (first-person perspective), and describes the experience and relationship between users and products, services, and systems in the form of narrative stories, so as to help understand user needs and find users Pain points.
You can first look at a picture to understand the user experience map:
We can define a user experience map as the following:
• Is a visual tool for describing user stories.
• It is a co-creation tool that helps designers, product managers, etc. to better understand users.
• From the user's perspective, intuitively display the pain points, needs and emotions of users at each touchpoint of the product process.
• The form of user experience map drawing is not unique, and the content can be added or subtracted according to project requirements.
Usually after getting in touch with the requirements, the designer can start to sort out the existing process and use the user experience map. Before making a user experience map, it is necessary to research and interview the user's use of the product. UX maps can be made with the help of some good whiteboards like BoardMix.
02 Why make a user experience map
The goal of product design is to design products with strong usability, high efficiency and good satisfaction. The overall user experience map can help everyone understand users, understand the entire path and feelings of users using the product, and thus help product and design decisions. Pixso summary: The user experience map has the following three aspects of value to the team:
①User perspective
In the user experience map, you can select and accurately locate the user's experience points, trigger more creative points and dig out more new viewpoints, and examine the process of experience from the user's perspective.
②Global Thinking
The user experience map allows the product to locate and view problems more comprehensively and globally in the process of demand exploration, and find out potential opportunities from them, which can promote users to feel more comfortable when using the product , to solve the pain point problem.
③Consensus reached
In the experience map, multiple designers, products, and markets are required to participate, so that everyone can sort out the process and promote cross-departmental collaboration, communication, and thinking. It enables everyone to look at user experience issues with empathy, fully reach a consensus, and twist together to efficiently promote the project.
How to Make a User Experience Map
Draw a user experience map, divided into the following steps:
Step1: Define the user
The "users" of the experience map are not created subjectively, but based on data and qualitative research. When preparing to start drawing user experience maps, we should establish user groups, determine product goals, understand user goals, and make user portraits.
Step2: Confirm the scene
After clarifying the target users, the staff needs to walk through the product from the user's perspective, from "coming with demand" to "accomplishing the goal" along the core scenario path, sorting out a coarse-grained story scenario table as a follow-up interview time outline template. The purpose is for each interviewer to interview, observe, and verify the user's operation behavior in the scene we are concerned about in a unified, clear, and purposeful manner during the interview.
Step3: User interview
The purpose of user interviews is to collect specific behaviors, perceptions, and emotions of real users at each stage in preparation for drawing an experience map. In the user interview session, you need to prepare:
• Background information on the interviewee
•Interviewer & Recorder
• Integrating interview conclusions
Step4: Draw an experience map
In the stage of drawing the experience map, we need to do:
① Arranging cards
In this link, we need to write the feedback from users in different stages (touch points, behaviors, pain points, and cool points) sorted out by the previous recorder on post-it notes of different colors, and put "I + verb" into "action" Doing" column, put "I feel" in the "feeling" column, so that the map will be clearer.
② Draw a map
Draw a horizontal axis and a vertical axis on the BoardMix whiteboard. The horizontal axis corresponds to the scene, and the vertical axis corresponds to the user's behavior, thoughts, cool points, pain points, mood curves, and the final opportunity point of brain explosion recorded in user interviews.
③ Visual output
Based on the content organized above, it is output as a visualized electronic version of the map on the BoardMix whiteboard, which can be shared with other team members for viewing and assistance with one click. Concrete vague ideas and turn abstract thoughts into actionable plans. Empower teams to fully understand information concepts and make effective decisions, turning ideas into reality.
Pixso's summary: A healthy user experience map is like a fishing process, which can discover new scenarios and opportunities, and help us explore more experience optimization points in usage scenarios from the perspective of the entire process. It's all about the user and can be engaged at every stage. It allows us to examine the experience process from the perspective of users, allows everyone to participate, promotes cross-departmental cross-role thinking and cooperation without boundaries, and can better locate pain points, solve pain points, and find opportunities in a better overall situation.
Of course, choosing an easy-to-use whiteboard tool is also very important! It is strongly recommended that you use the Pixso whiteboard to draw user experience maps, and quickly complete the visualization of work results, ideas, processes, solutions, etc. through scene templates. Pixso whiteboard can effectively improve the work efficiency in various scenarios of team communication, thinking collision, idea collection and business discussion, comprehensively improve the team work process, sort out process information and form knowledge sharing.
