Cognitive Mapping in UX Research
What it is and how it can be used to help you better understand the people you are designing with
We did a class assignment last week where we were supposed to conduct a cognitive mapping activity. The first question that popped in my head was “What exactly is cognitive mapping?”. Moreover, I had no idea why I as a designer should do something like this.
What exactly is cognitive mapping and why should I care about it ?
A cognitive map is a drawing on a piece of paper, drawn by the participant. This drawing is a mental map of any metaphorical or physical space around the participant, drawn purely out of a recall from memory and reference. Cognitive mapping invites the participant to evaluate memory instincts and process them into a visual schema.
How I conducted the exercise
For this exercise, I invited my friend Ray to draw on my dry erase sheets, which are pasted on my room’s wall. I showed him couple of cognitive maps to give him an idea of what I expected him to do. I also assured him that I was not trying to test his skill of drawing, sketching, or sense of direction. The purpose of the exercise was to explore how much he could recall out of his memory to sketch out a map. Since we were based in Bloomington, Indiana, it was fair to assume that it would be easier for him to draw the commuting route between home and place of work, since most of students live within 2 miles of the centre of the university. For Ray, two sets of activities were presented to him:
- Drawing a map of his immediate neighborhood and how he daily commutes from his apartment to his workplace in the University.
- Drawing a map of any place in Bloomington which triggers a sense of any emotional quality (joy, happiness, sadness, etc.)
Once he agreed to do it, I asked him to start drawing on a dry erase board. He had the freedom to use any colors he wanted. He chose to use black and red and explained what he was sketching as he went along.
“This is our home, Park Doral. And this is 45/46.”
“Wait a minute, something is not right. I’ll have to make this again.”
Strategy 2.0
This time, Ray changed his strategy for mapping. Previously, he was mapping and labeling piece by piece (moving from place to place). About halfway, he realized that certain intersections were not accurate in directions.
“45/46 cannot be parallel to 3rd street because I know that bus takes a turn”
So he decided to erase the drawing and sketch it again by drawing the roads and connections first, and then label them later. He also decided to sketch them a bit smaller, so that the entire thing fits into the dry erase sheet. (sense of canvas space).
Directional sense
It was fascinating to see how his directional sense worked to map out his route of taking the bus. Usually, when we architects see maps, we always mark north towards the upper side of the canvas (this is industry standard, even for Google Maps). But Ray decided to go from the bottom of the map to the top of the map, where he unintentionally aligned the north to the right side of the map. This was an interesting insight to take note of. If I were to draw the same map, I would have made it exactly the way it looks on Google Maps, keeping the north on the top of the page, with our apartment on the east side of the town.
Q: “What’s that one place in Bloomington that makes you happy? (other than your immediate neighborhood)”
A: “Griffy Lake!”
Q: “Would you mind drawing that for me?”
A: “Sure!”
On identifying the elements
He told me that he does not remember the names of the neighborhood that he has to cross from the house to the lake. I asked him to draw whatever he remembered and then give it a title, such as “Big Building” or “lots of trees”. Unintentionally, he drew the map with North upwards, just the way it happens on Google Maps. This time the map was extremely close to accuracy in terms of direction.
How do you navigate to these places?
I use Google Maps to navigate to these places.
Do you keep looking at Maps while walking?
Not constantly, I would see the Map, walk till the next junction/landmark and then check the maps again.
For me, it is important to keep a sense of direction, which is always there.
I also use DoubleMap for buses, where I would save the routes I use on the Map, and check the bus which is about to come to my bus stop. By this time I have a rough idea of how much time the bus would take to reach the my stop.
How do you think the public transport of Bloomington is?
It could definitely be better, I think buses should move away from different schedules on different days to actually measuring real time crowd, and based on the crowd, should adjust the frequency of buses. On weekends, people have to go to place for shopping, leisure etc, but it becomes very difficult.
“On weekdays, I would wait if I miss my bus, because the frequency of the buses are enough. On weekends, I would simply have to go back because the next bus would take like an hour or so.”
My personal reflection
I learnt about how people have a sense of physical space and surroundings around them, and how they can document them. I asked Ray whether using something like Google Maps is hampering his natural sense of direction and making him more dependent on technology, and his response was awakening. He told me that indeed it is making him more dependent to technology, but as long as he has easy access to it, it wouldn’t hurt to depend on it. He gave me an analogical example that obviously memorizing all the contacts would make his brainer sharper, but he doesn’t need to do that as long as he has an easy access to his contact list on the phone.
In terms of design research, I think this technique could be used to extract information about how any system is actually represented on any platform vs how they perceive it, For example, how Ray drew the map vs the actual Google Map of the area. If I would go on to superimpose the two maps, they would barely match. Although, what was more interesting was to compare the exercise with my skill set of making maps and drawings, something which I acquired with my background in Architecture.
Also, cognitive mapping really helps to understand what features stand out for participants, which could be anything from buildings, landmarks to a peculiar turn the bus takes (The number 9 bus in Bloomington takes a loop at a bus stop named ‘Tulip Tree’, which Ray described as ‘Tulip turn’.
I honestly do not know the shortcomings for this method, as I was not using it anyway to deliver a design research project. I saw this project as something which was given to me as a class assignment. Cognitive mapping can also be done on a community level, with a group of people sketching together. For a larger group of participants, the results have the potential to be much different because cognitive mapping is highly subjective.
Overall, I enjoyed the process of observing someone mapping out their thoughts right in front of me. I think the process of using a dry erase board as the medium really helped because it gave him the idea that it was okay to make mistakes. Also, he was able to use different colors on the dry erase board, which helped me distinguish between annotations and physical marking.
