Using Experience Maps to Consider Individual Stories

The creation of experience maps is a UX research method that has been used to diagram and represent the overall or holistic experience of users to understand their goals, needs, pain points, and more. Although this method is meant to broaden how user journeys are considered and represented, experience maps can create a perception of an ideal user or pathway and may not account for the dynamic, evolving, and varying nature of experiences (such as in relation to context, culture, etc.) through this averaging of people and potentially narrow focus. In this experience report, I consider how experience maps are described and meant to be created. Next, I describe using this method to represent individual stories to demonstrate how this method could potentially be broadened to display a range of experiences and differences and to avoid focusing on only what is considered average or normal.