Unveiling Geospatial Influence: A Deep Dive into Mapping Power
The Apollo 11 mission, which saw humans first step on the moon on July 20, 1969, was a monumental feat of spatial, procedural, and time coordination. One of the key elements that aided the astronauts and NASA in this unfamiliar environment was the use of specialized map visualizations. This ancient power of maps is now being leveraged by UX designers to simplify complex processes, create shared understanding, and reveal hidden insights in the modern world.
Maps, one of the earliest human inventions dating back to around 25,000 B.C., have been used in various areas of life, including global exploration, space travel, project planning, and vehicle navigation. In the context of journey mapping, this ancient power is being harnessed to guide product teams in navigating and optimizing the user experience.
Journey mapping allows UX designers to use the power of maps to solve modern UX design challenges. By visualizing complex user interactions, identifying pain points, and emotional states, journey maps provide a detailed visualization of the user’s interactions across all touchpoints. This aids designers and teams in empathizing with users, optimizing workflows, and ultimately creating products that users love and keep using.
Maps simplify complex spaces just enough to convey essential information. For the Apollo mission, this meant showing only the things needed for the mission, helping the astronauts navigate in an unfamiliar environment. Similarly, useful maps in UX design simplify complex processes, making them easier to understand and navigate for users.
Maps create shared understanding among a group by providing a common reference point. This was crucial for the Apollo mission, as none of the astronauts had seen the moon before. In UX design, shared understanding is essential for teams to align their efforts and create products that meet user needs and expectations.
The examples of the Apollo mission illustrate the importance of maps in coordinating actions. As UX designers face more complex challenges, they are increasingly turning to the ancient power of maps. Maps can reveal hidden insights by showing patterns and data that might not be immediately apparent. This can help in simplifying a long-term fitness app experience, creating shared understanding in digital finance experiences, revealing hidden insights in multi-person online games, and coordinating actions with developers, support people, product managers, and marketers.
In essence, journey mapping in UX design is a modern adaptation of the traditional mapping principle: creating a visual, strategic guide through a complex journey, but applied to user experience instead of physical space. This analogy helps explain why journey maps are powerful tools for improving products and aligning teams to user-centered goals.
Citations: [1] Clay, 2025-07-31 [2] Indeed Career Advice, 2025-07-26 [3] ProductLed, 2025-08-12 [4] Miro, 2025-08-06 [5] Userpilot, 2025-08-16
- UX design has embraced the ancient power of maps, similar to the Apollo mission, by visualizing complex user interactions and simplifying processes, creating shared understanding among teams and revealing hidden insights, such as optimizing the user experience in a long-term fitness app, digital finance experiences, multi-person online games, and coordinating actions with developers, support people, product managers, and marketers.
- By utilizing journey mapping, UX designers create a visual, strategic guide through the user's journey, as opposed to physical space, much like maps assisted astronauts in navigating the moon. This powerful tool enables designers to empathize with users, optimize workflows, and ultimately create products that users love and keep using, making it essential for teams to align their efforts and meet user needs and expectations.
