The Experience Mapping Project

Mapping a visitor experience

The Experience Mapping Project emphasizes holistic design—thinking about the entire process and all factors influencing the user's experience. While "holistic" relates to the word "whole," it goes beyond what happens on a screen to consider the complete context of user interaction. In this project, we explore users' interactions within a physical museum space, where exhibits are just some of the many touchpoints available. We design for multiple touchpoints—the various ways and moments a user interacts with a product or service throughout their journey. These touchpoints may be a printed map (physical), or an app that guides the visitor using bluetooth beacons (digital), or speaking with employees of the museum like “explainers” (interpersonal).

The Mapping Project teaches students to consider not just the use of a product or app, but what happens before, during, and after the interaction. By deliberately side-stepping any single screen and focusing on the overall end-to-end experience. Ultimately this experience includes the visitors feelings, mindset, and external influences.

Students will explore how multiple touchpoints work together to create experiences that guide visitors along a journey. Students will also learn to structure a sequence of events and transform it into a cohesive story.

Questions explored include:

• How do we account for intangible elements such as enjoyment, sensory engagement, and emotional influences?
• How do we define and design for pleasure and subjective experiences?
• Can we design without considering the holistic experience?
• Can we design for just one touchpoint and still create value?

Why learn this?

• Learn to capture and present complete experiences through mapping.
• Design for multi-modal interactions in three-dimensional spaces.
• Create multi-sensory experiences while expanding the possibilities of interaction design.

What to do

• Create a top-view abstract map of the location
  • An abstract overview of the start of the experience, where the visitor will go, and where the visitor finishes the experience.
• Develop a storyboard of the journey from the visitor’s perspective:
  • Pre-Interaction: Anticipation and expectations when entering the location.
  • Interaction: What happens during the visit? It’s worth also considering emotional states, pain points, or moments of delight.
  • Post-Interaction: How does the experience conclude? Are there follow-ups, long-term impacts, or next steps?
• Demonstrate the visitors experience from their perspective.
  • Use sketches, a physical model of the space, or 3D tools like SketchUp and Mental Canvas.
• Reflect and iterate
  • Consider the journey from the visitors perspective. What can you change to improve the experience?

Video Presentation

Can be an animation or slideshow with voice overs.

Introduction

• Explain the goal for the visitors experience and what they are meant to walk away with.
• Tell the viewers what they should expect to know by the end of the presentation.

Walk-through of the visitors experience

• Describe the scope of the experience design problem, including key user profiles and relevant touchpoints (physical, digital, interpersonal).
• Mention any significant research insights or user feedback that guided the design decisions.
• Point out critical observations or challenges you uncovered during research or user testing.
• Demonstrate how you iterated on your concepts (e.g., changes to the flow, added features, removed friction points).
• Include short clips, images, or animations that illustrate the user journey or show prototypes in action.

Reflections & Next Steps

• Discuss lessons learned throughout the project and how they could apply to future work.
• Suggest further iterations, scaling possibilities, or opportunities for deeper user research.