What Is a Cognitive Map?

Written by Coursera Staff • Updated on

In user experience (UX) research, a cognitive map offers a visual representation of a user’s mental perception of a concept or process. Learn more about what a cognitive map is and how to draw one, and explore cognitive map examples.

[Featured image] A UX designer is using cognitive maps to research on their laptop.

Key takeaways

  • A cognitive map is a mental representation of your environment that evolves as you experience new things.

  • A cognitive map, in psychology, refers to the work of psychologist Edward C. Tolman, who, based on observations of rat behavior, proposed that to learn and navigate your environment, you create mental maps to help you understand spatial relationships and build connections.

  • In user experience (UX) research, a cognitive map is a diagramming technique that helps product users create a visual depiction of how they interact with a product.

Continue reading to learn more about cognitive maps and how to draw one from scratch. Then, if you’re ready to learn more about UX design, consider enrolling in Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate program. In this eight-course series, you can learn how to conduct user research to create wireframes or prototypes, test and iterate on designs, carry out usability studies, and more.

What is a cognitive map?

A cognitive map is a mental representation of your physical space that helps you understand spatial relationships, build connections, and navigate. In simple terms, it's a mental image that may evolve as you experience new things.

In user experience (UX) design, cognitive mapping describes users' perceptions and expectations of a product and is an important part of the user research process. This diagramming technique helps UX designers understand how users think about and interact with a product or interface.

Cognitive map: Psychology definition

Tolman’s cognitive map is a psychological theory proposing that animals, including humans, build mental maps of their environment to learn its spatial dimensions and navigate it. Edward C. Tolman was an American psychologist at UC Berkeley who studied the behavior of rats in mazes and, based on the rats' ability to remember details within the mazes and identify shortcuts, coined the term “cognitive map.”

How to draw a cognitive map

You can create a cognitive map digitally or on paper, whiteboards, or sticky notes using any artist’s tools, such as pens, pencils, markers, or crayons. It is often done in an informal interview setting with participants either creating their own maps or completing a provided template. Bullet points, illustrations, charts, diagrams, and abstract shapes are all permissible in this free-form problem-solving style.

Read more: AI in UX Design: Examples, Tools, and Trends

Types of cognitive maps: Mind and concept maps

Cognitive maps help UX designers understand the intricacies involved in user experience. They are tools for visually representing cognitive processing and externalizing knowledge. Through cognitive mapping, you can provide context for conceptual relationships and patterns that may help you identify issues and improve user experience with your design.

  • Mind maps: Mind maps are the most simplistic form of cognitive mapping. They focus on a central idea and use branches to elaborate on the user’s viewpoint with subtopics and thoughts. This hierarchical structure creates an environment layout similar to a tree structure, where the branches and leaves all connect to a root concept. This arrangement helps connect concepts and ideas to one another.

  • Concept maps: Concept maps often follow a stricter chart structure that reads from top to bottom to encourage deeper logical analysis. The main characteristic of this map is the definition of relationships between concepts. As a rule, the map starts with one node, representing a concept that can parent multiple nodes. Labels define relationships between nodes.

Cognitive map examples

Anyone who has ever mapped out a brainstorming session by starting with a word or phrase and listing ideas that connect to it has already used mind mapping. Brainstorming maps help create new ideas and connect them to a central goal or starting point. You can also use that same basic structure to create a concept map, identifying a primary idea or theme, which you put at the top of the map, and then listing related subtopics, concepts, and details that connect to it in a hierarchical organizational structure. You can also organize concepts using a step-by-step process mapping structure, cause-and-effect structure, or a network of connected concepts.

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