Reconstruct a case with evidence, separate observed steps from assumptions and choose one specific friction to examine with the people experiencing it.
Bound a complete need
Choose a situation, a recognizable beginning and an ending. For a fictional bakery, the journey starts when someone needs an order for a gathering and ends when they collect it and know how to raise a later question. “Visit Instagram” would be just one touchpoint within that experience.
GOV.UK describes experience maps as representations of actions, thoughts and feelings over a service, built from research. Our initial exercise prepares that research: sketch what you believe happens first and explicitly mark what still needs checking with users.
Reconstruct one case without imagining the missing parts
Find a real request you are authorized to review. Collect necessary messages, the form used, confirmation and delivery record. Retain only relevant information and avoid copying personal details into a shared presentation. If you do not know what happened between two steps, show the gap.
In the fictional bakery, someone sees a photograph, asks about quantities in chat and receives a total. How collection is confirmed remains unknown. This sequence is an illustrative hypothesis. Describing several actual customers’ experiences would require listening to their accounts and reviewing differences between cases.
Use four rows connecting experience and operation
- Action: what the person tries to do at each stage.
- Information: what they need to know to continue.
- Response: the page, message or assistance they receive.
- Owner: who can answer a question or correct that step.
Add evidence and open questions beneath them. Record an emotion as observed only when the person expresses it or research supports it; otherwise, retain a question to explore. The map should distinguish available knowledge from what the team considers probable.
Examine the confirmation moment carefully
After submitting an order, does the person know whether it was merely sent or actually accepted? Do they know the date, location and how to request a change? GOV.UK’s confirmation pattern includes what happens next and when, alongside relevant references and contact details. It is a design reference to adapt to your service context.
In the example, a message might summarize request, state and next action: “Request received; we will review availability and reply through this channel.” The sentence must match the real process. If the order remains unconfirmed, the wording needs to preserve that state.
Choose an improvement you can observe
Suppose several people ask where to collect an order. Before redesigning everything, check whether the current message includes an identifiable arrival point. Prepare clearer wording and ask someone to explain where they would go in their own words. Record what was missing and what changed.
Customer questions help prioritize explanations. Our positioning guide helps review the initial promise. This map connects that promise with subsequent work, where a question needs a concrete instruction or a responsible person.
Keep review scope separate from results
Record cases reviewed, period, change and subsequent observations. Favorable feedback documents understanding in that case. Claiming a general change in abandonment or purchases would need definitions, comparable measurement and context about other changes.
Finish with a small decision: retain the instruction, test it with more people or resolve an operational problem wording cannot fix. Our visibility-and-results guide distinguishes signals at different stages. A journey locates those signals without assuming one caused the next.
Follow the evidence.
Sources checked October 18, 2026. Illustrative scenarios and numbers are fictional. The records and exercises are original editorial proposals, without attributed customer results or provider tests. Our editorial standards.
