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UX Maps: Glossary
The Nielsen Norman Group provides a comprehensive glossary to disambiguate the confusing landscape of UX mapping terminology used in modern product development.
What: The glossary defines 30 distinct mapping artifacts, distinguishing between tools like service blueprints, which connect business processes to customer touchpoints, and experience maps, which focus on generic user behaviors.
Why it matters: Teams frequently misuse terminology, leading to misalignment on whether a map serves as a strategic discovery tool or a tactical design specification.
Deep dive
- Provides a standard vocabulary for common UX artifacts
- Categorizes maps by their primary function: discovery, strategy, or execution
- Differentiates between product roadmaps (all business problems) and field roadmaps (UX-specific problems)
- Explains the nuance between user flows (task-specific steps) and service blueprints (system-wide relationship visualizations)
- Includes templates for common formats like stakeholder maps and journey maps
Decoder
- Service Blueprint: A visualization showing the relationship between service components—people, props, and processes—and customer touchpoints.
- Wireflow: A design format combining wireframe-style page layouts with flowcharts to represent user interactions.
- Affinity Diagram: A clustering method used to group related insights, typically using sticky notes, during brainstorming or research analysis.
Original article
NN/g's UX Maps glossary defines and distinguishes common mapping tools.
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