Andy Priestner (info@andypriestnertraining.com @andypriestner) is a freelance UX trainer and consultant and Chair of the UX in Libraries conference andypriestnertraining.com uxlib.org.

This month I’d like to focus on a UX research technique that offers unparalleled access to the thoughts, preferences and experiences of your users: the cognitive map. It may sound complicated but the idea itself is very simple: asking a library user to draw their experience of a library service or, more broadly, of learning. You may be thinking that the fact that this technique involves drawing automatically excludes large swathes of your user population, but really all you are after – and this must be communicated to the user beforehand to reassure them – is doodles or scribbles, simple stick men and women, anything that helps to express their experience through this less frequently used medium.