Experience map

Q: What's the difference between an experience map and a user journey?

The two are quite often used interchangeably. In reality, it's all a question of scale. An experience map generally corresponds to a broader view of everything that happens for the user. The user journey, for its part, focuses more specifically on the moments when the user is in contact with the service or the product. In short, an experience map can contain several journeys.

Q: What's the difference between an experience map and a service blueprint?

In this case, it's much simpler to tell them apart. The experience map describes everything that happens on the user's side. The service blueprint looks at everything that happens on the side of those who provide the service. Combining the two makes it possible to lay out the entire workings, current or desired, of a service or a product.

UX deliverable

Modelling the experience your users live, existing or to come

The experience map is an augmented version of the user journey, from which it takes up the logic of breaking things down into steps.

In an experience map, you set out to describe end to end the actions carried out by a user on a given theme. This classically includes the upstream and downstream steps around the use of a service. It's therefore important to understand that an experience map isn't limited to the sole moments during which a user interacts with your product or service.

Modelling an experience map, or experience mapping, therefore means retracing the different steps that all or part of your users go through to reach a goal. Experience mapping thus defines a panoramic view of the pathways, dwelling on the real needs, the actions carried out and the difficulties encountered.

What is an experience map for?

representing the characteristics of the experience as it is lived by users
giving an overall view that isn't limited to interactions with your products alone
visualising the steps that matter most to users
identifying gaps or unmet needs

Why build an experience map?

synthesising usage data
establishing a diagnosis of the situation at a given point in time
identifying opportunities for your products or services
projecting an ideal experience

Behavioural archetypes

On the basis of the research carried out, you identify different behavioural typologies of user in relation to the service and/or the product concerned (see « personas »).

Defining a journey skeleton

For the before, during and after phases of the interaction with the service, you break down the different steps of the users' experience that will serve as a frame of reference for the model. Like any model, it's necessarily partial and incomplete; the essential thing is to include all the moments that are relevant to document. It could be a very short step but a very strategic one for the company, or one for which you have a lot of interesting feedback, for example.

Building the experience map

Depending on what you're studying and the purpose of the exercise, the lines will evolve, with the needs and blocking points generally set against opportunities. As far as possible, you incorporate leads for solutions and/or features spotted in contact with users. It's also possible to list emotions and annotate quotes. This work is very frequently carried out with the project teams to ensure a cross-check between the business vision and the findings from the study.

Making use of the experience map

This step comes after delivery, once the experience map is in the hands of the client teams. A snapshot of an existing situation or a target project, the experience map is meant to evolve through an update of its content. This type of deliverable isn't an end in itself but a genuine decision-support tool for the company's projects.

An experience map built on the basis of real data is a fairly dense document that holds a great deal of usable information.

As with personas, particular care is given to the graphic quality of the final document. Meant to be shared and used by the business teams, it’s important that an experience map makes you want to read it and offers the best possible readability.

What's the difference between an experience map and a user journey?

What's the difference between an experience map and a service blueprint?

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Related methods

UX mapping

UX mapping represents a concept or a problem in a simplified form, to make it easier to understand and take ownership of.

Service blueprint

The service blueprint represents the back-office side of the experience. It describes the organisation of the touchpoints the user crosses.

Personas

Personas come out of work on user-profile modelling. They highlight behavioural archetypes that prove useful when designing.

User journey

The user journey breaks a process down into steps to surface user needs and expectations for a given goal.

User flow

The user flow is a visual representation that models the paths a user can take when going through a site or an app.

Empathy map

An empathy map is a compact visualisation that captures the characteristics of a user's experience in a given context.

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