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Drawing the diagram

Now things will get exciting. We will add the opportunity to the map. You can write "Opportunity: Happy Cat", or have some fun creating a happy cat line art like I did:

The main map elements in User Experience Mapping are often called cards. This is because you can use a blank card, or more often a sticky note to represent them.

If you draw two boxes or place two cards, one above the other, then people assume that the one above is more important. Horizontal alignment usually represents progress, so placing a card to the right, usually means something happening after or as a cause. This is only true where left-to-right writing is more popular and not as obvious as a vertical placement. So, for horizontal layouts, use arrows to reinforce the meaning.

For each map, you need to create a structure that can be easily understood at a glance. For many maps, it makes sense to name the card by the outcome. Geographic and route map elements have their name, but those names can also be outcomes. For example, if I want to go to Budapest by car, the outcome is getting to Budapest. All I need to do is find the map element name Budapest to use the map.

In the next chapter, we will use sticky notes to represent cards, as they have many advantages. Movable, easy-to-rearrange cards are vital in the early, ideation phase of a product. Fortunately, our vision is clear, and we cast our priorities into stone in a totally non-agile way. Please don't try this at home, and always maintain flexibility in product management and in life. However, for this demo, it's okay to draw the cards on the paper.

For each card, we also want to add a short version of the requirements associated with the outcome. For multi-user, multi-platform, or multi-channel cards, we want to add those classifications. As our map is only aimed at cat-sitters, it's pointless to define the cat-sitter user group.

The last step is adding a title. Usually, you want to give your maps a meaningful title. I have seen digitally created maps with titles ranging from "Untitled" and "UXMap" to the URL of the site. Needless to say, all those are terrible choices. People who are not familiar with the process used to generate the map should know instantly what it is describing. Titles are also helpful when distributing the maps to the wider organization to get buy-in.

When creating a title for your map, try to find something that the stakeholders can relate to. Something that stops them in their tracks and starts user-centric thinking based on the subject.

In our example, “How to make a cat happy?” will do the trick. I add the "Opportunity" to the title, if that can be spelled out with simple and short words. If not, then you might need to think a bit more about your opportunity. Remember that now you need to discuss this with your main stakeholder, the cat-sitter. You need both the map and a conversation to solve a problem. In the following chapters, we will see business situations and get into facilitating the conversation using the map, but this chapter's examples stop at the finished map:

This map is also an example for cards not needing well-defined edges. It's customary to draw a rectangle or use a sticky note as a card, but sometimes it's not needed. I could have added a thin border around each card, but it would have added only visual clutter. As you can see, just a few words on a paper can form a map.

In the next section of this chapter, we will draw the same map with well-defined card boundaries, and more importantly using digital tools instead of free-hand.