A customer journey map is a visualization of the process that a person
goes through in order to accomplish a goal tied to a specific business or product. It’s
used for understanding and addressing customer needs and pain points.
In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user goals
and actions into a timeline skeleton. Next, the skeleton is fleshed out with user
thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative. Finally, that narrative is
condensed into a visualization used to communicate insights that will inform design
processes

Customer journey mapping

An experience map is a visualization of an entire end-to-end experience
that a “generic” person goes through in order to accomplish a goal. This experience
is agnostic of a specific business or product. It’s used for understanding a general
human behavior (as opposed to a customer journey map, which is more specific and
focused on related to a specific business).

Experience Mapping

A collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to 1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and 2) aid in decision making.

Empathy mapping

 A service blueprint visualizes the relationships between different service components — people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes — that are directly tied to touchpoints in a specific customer journey.

Service blueprint 

There are four common methods of UX mapping:
- Empathy mapping
- Customer journey mapping
- Experience mapping
- Service blueprinting

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

While working with a large interdisciplinary team, everyone needs to be on the same page about user needs and behaviors, project goals, and all the different parts involved in a project. This common understanding by the team is commonly built by mapping. Mappings help a team make sense of and describe various parts and processes associated with a product or project.

UX mapping methods

Gibbons, S. (2017, November 5). UX Mapping Methods Compared: A Cheat Sheet. Nielson Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-mapping-cheat-sheet/. 

Learn Before

Learn After

Learn After