Workshop 2: Mapping What Can’t Be Seen

Duration: 4 hours
Participants: 10–15 students
Format: In-person or hybrid
Ideal for: intermediate to advanced students who have a grasp of basic mapping but need to push their analytical and representational boundaries.

Materials:

  • Fictional service blueprint with intentional omissions
  • Map fragments, translucent tracing paper
  • Colored string, pins or washi tape
  • Printed stimulus cards (e.g., metaphors: tunnel, echo, fracture, fog)
  • Post-its, fine-line pens, color-coded markers
  • Whiteboard or Miro board
  • Projector or printed stills from Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)

Learning Goals

By the end of this workshop, students will:

  • Understand that research maps are interpretations, not mirrors.
  • Learn to represent gaps, absences, contradictions, and emotions — not just process steps.
  • Practice reconstructing systems from incomplete or biased evidence.
  • Develop techniques to make silences visible in a visual format.
  • Challenge visual conventions in UX (blueprints, journey maps) to show lived experience.

Before the Workshop

Pre-Workshop Email (Subject: “Not everything can be drawn — but we try.”)
Body:
Maps look clean. Life is not.
In this session, we’ll look at what gets erased in traditional UX diagrams — and how to bring that back in.
Optional: Watch the basement reveal scene in Parasite. Think about how space can be misleading.
Bring a memory of a time you misunderstood a system — and only realized it too late.

Structure & Facilitation Plan

PART 1 — Misleading Maps (30 min)

Facilitator shows stills from Parasite

  • Focus on staircases, false floors, and architecture that hides people.

Facilitator Story: “I once mapped a user journey that felt solid. Clear. Logical. Only later did I realize: we never accounted for fear. For shame.
The map worked. The experience did not.”

Student Prompt (Sticky Notes): “When did a map, plan, or diagram give you false confidence?”
Stick on a shared board titled Maps We Trusted Too Much.

PART 2 — Reading the Blueprint Backwards (45 min)

Distribute fictional service blueprint:

  • A well-designed map of a user flow for a healthcare booking app.
  • Missing: emotional reactions, systemic constraints, staff burnout.

 

Group Task:

  • Identify what’s missing.
  • Highlight sections where the map assumes smoothness but reality is fractured.
  • Annotate moments of risk, silence, or bias.

 

Metaphor Cards:
Each group draws a metaphor card (e.g., blind corner, echo, crack).
They must reinterpret the blueprint using that metaphor.

Debrief:

  • What changed when you applied a metaphor?
  • What was made visible?

 

Link to Learning Goal:
“You’re seeing that maps shape what gets noticed — and what gets erased.”

PART 3 – Stringing the Silences (45 min)

Kinesthetic Activity:

  • Each student chooses a research insight they’ve seen that didn’t fit any diagram.
  • On translucent paper, they sketch a moment or fragment.
  • Using string, they connect that insight to another’s — building an emergent map.

Facilitator Cue: “You’re mapping resonance — not process. What lines stretch between hidden truths?”
Optional Soundtrack: Subtle ambient track to create quiet focus.

Reflection Prompt:

  • What can be mapped through emotion?
  • What patterns emerged that no process model would reveal?

PART 4 – Reconstruction From Partial Evidence (60 min)

Distribute fictional fragments:

Fictional Dataset: “City Feedback App”

  • 4 user comments pulled from an online review board.
  • An excerpt from a council meeting, redacted.
  • Screenshots from the app showing neutral design.
  • Survey data showing low response rate, high usage.

Task (in pairs):

  • Create a journey map of the user experience — knowing it’s incomplete.
  • Document:
    • What you know
    • What you assume
    • What you cannot know

 

Facilitator says: “This is not about filling gaps. It’s about tracing around them — like negative space in drawing.”
Role Twist: Whisper to one student:
“You are the designer who made the app. You’re defensive. Push back on negative interpretations.”
Another:
“You are the researcher. You saw more than what was recorded, but you weren’t listened to.”

Debrief using What → So What → Now What:

  • What was hard about mapping partial data?
  • So what: What does this tell you about research handoffs?
  • Now what: How will you document nuance next time?

PART 5 – Make the Invisible Visible (30 min)

Each student receives one insight from their own map.

  • They must represent it without words using shape, symbol, or color.

Facilitator says: “This is your personal signal — something you saw but couldn’t explain fully. Give it form.”
Create a wall titled: What the Research Remembered, Quietly

Optional baton or token passed as each symbol is placed.

PART 6 – Letter to Future Self (30 min)

Prompt: Write to your future self:

  • I used to think maps were…
  • Now I know that mapping is also…
  • One invisible thread I’ll follow next time is…

Optional: Read one line aloud.

Evaluation Framework

Evaluation Criterion: Conceptual Mapping of Intangibles

  • Description: Demonstrates ability to represent invisible or emotional aspects of an experience using visual metaphors, symbols, or nonlinear structures.
  • Assessment Method: Evaluated through submitted maps; assessed for conceptual originality, intentional use of visual form, and alignment with user experience dynamics.

Evaluation Criterion: Collaborative Interpretation

  • Description: Participates actively in decoding and discussing peer-created maps; contributes original insights and constructive questions.
  • Assessment Method: Facilitator logs of discussion; optional peer feedback form.

Evaluation Criterion: Analytical Annotation

  • Description: Uses annotations to frame contradictions, uncertainty, or emerging insights rather than simple observations.
  • Assessment Method: Assessed via map review: at least two annotations must describe a tension, ambiguity, or subjective interpretation.