As an agency that practices experience mapping, we utilize a lot of tools and resources from the service design community. Yay, co-creation!
We pulled our notes out of Evernote and posted them here as a list of experience mapping tools for ourselves — and for you too.
This page was updated in September 2015.
Experience mapping tools.
Tutorials
Experience mapping is best learned by doing, but these tutorials are a good resource for your first experience map.
Anatomy of an Experience Map
Written by Chris Risdon of Adaptive Path, this is the tutorial we keep coming back to.
Our Guide to Experience Map
An in-depth, downloadable guide to the basics of experience mapping.
How to create a Customer Journey Map
Good breakdown and examples of an experience map.
Customer Journey Mapping Workbook (.PDF)
A helpful workbook from ISITE Design.
How to run a customer journey mapping workshop
An overview from Paul Boag on how to run your workshop.
Experience map layout / grid
Experience maps don’t follow a required template, but there are some common elements on an experience map. The layout of most experience maps places the stages or steps to be mapped along the top (x-axis) and the information to be determined (about the customer) on the left side (y-axis) of the grid.
(Download the Experience map layout / grid example — .PDF)
Experience map layout / grid.
Examples
Experience maps are designed to reflect the customer, not another experience map, therefore most finished maps will be unique. The examples below show an experience map at various stages of completion: workshop, draft and final.
Experience map workshop. (Pattern / Visit Hendricks County)
Draft experience map. (Pattern / Colorado Parks & Wildlife)
Final experience map. (Adaptive Path / Rail Europe)
Books
A list of books to learn more about experience mapping.
This is Service Design Thinking
The definitive Service Design handbook, it talks extensively about experience mapping.
Mapping the User Experience
Focused on the UX side, but still a good read.
Videos
Introductory videos about experience mapping.
Applications
Tools and mobile applications to record customer insights, convert maps into digital formats and capture images of your Post-it note covered experience map.
Smaply
An online tool to build stakeholder maps, journey maps and personas.
UXPressia
An online tool to build and export experience maps.
Mindly
Technically this iPhone app is for visual note taking / thinking, but has numerous possibilities because of the flexible functionality.
Mural.ly
A visual collaboration / brainstorming tool (which we use often!), also available as an iPhone app.
Journeys
An iPad application for building experience maps.
Post-it Plus
An iPhone app to capture, convert and digitize post-it notes.
Touchpoint Dashboard
An online tool to help create, organize and distribute journey maps.
Blank Canvas
A lightweight, virtual wall that lets teams collaborate around post-its and sketches.
Journaling / Feedback
Mobile applications to help your customers record their service interactions for use during the experience mapping workshop.
My Experience Fellow
From the team behind Smaply, an iPhone app that let’s customers record their experience.
Heyday
Not designed for specifically experience mapping, but a great journaling app ready to be hacked to meet your needs.
Reporter
An iPhone app designed to record information about your life — or in this case, your customer’s experience.
Templates
Free templates and downloads of experience maps.
Mini Experience Map Template
Our contribution is a template for beginners, the mini map. An easy introduction to building your first experience map.
Experience Map
A basic map from DIY Toolkit.
Customer Journey Canvas
Not much explanation, but plenty of room for mapping.
Customer Journey Map Template
A good experience map if you have a lot of touchpoints (read: need space on the map).
Materials
A list of common materials required for an experience mapping workshop.
Post-it Notes
Cheap, sticky, colorful — Post-it notes do the hard work during the experience mapping workshop.
Sharpie(s)
Bring enough for everyone to have two (extras never hurt!).
Butcher Paper
Available at office supply stores, put the sticky notes on here, then roll-up for safe keeping.
Tape
Masking tape, not scotch tape, works best for holding your butcher paper to the wall.
Camera
Pretty sure your phone has one, but still, have one on hand for taking photos of the results.
Tripod
Optional, but useful. TheGorillaPodis our favorite.
Also called…
Experience mapping can also be called:
Customer journey
Customer journey mapping
Experience journey
Journey mapping
Alignment diagrams